Assessment, Treatment and Rehabilitation of Adult Patients with Brain Damage

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Abstract
Brain damage has become an enormous social and economical load all over the world. There is an urgent need for research on prevention of brain damage. Accepted possibilities of prevention should be used more consciously in clinical practise. Full assessment of all functional disturbances caused by cerebrovascular accidents and brain injury is the first step to successful treatment and rehabilitation. The management in the early stage, the neurophysiology of regeneration after brain damage and therapeutic techniques used are discussed. The advantages of a combination of formal rehabilitation with a sound informal net-work of reliable persons around the patient are emphasized. Results concerning independence in daily living of a formal rehabilitation program as compaired to a group of patients who had only been treated in the acute hospital are presented. Also the possible value of a standardized neuropsychological assessment and a specifically designed neuropsychological training in addition to the allround rehabilitation program are discussed. The urgent need for more widely accepted and practised standardized assessments is stressed. Only by permanent use of the same standardized assessments comparison of patients of different rehabilitation units, evaluation of techniques used and elaboration of reliable criteria for treatment and non-treatment might eventually be established.