Efficacy of an intervention programme for rehabilitation of awareness of deficit after acquired brain injury: A pilot study

ABSTRACT

Background: Impaired Awareness of Deficit (AD) is a frequent symptom after suffering acquired brain injury (ABI) that severely influences patients’ daily lives.

Primary Objective: Pilot study to assess the effectiveness of a structured intervention programme which was developed from a biopsychosocial approach, and relied on common therapeutic strategies of proven effectiveness.

Methods: We assessed the effectiveness of our intervention on a sample of 60 patients with ABI, 30 of whom received the specific AD intervention programme, while the other 30 followed an equivalent rehabilitation approach where they received no specific intervention on AD. AD were assessed before and after the specific intervention on AD through an ad-hoc designed questionnaire.

Results: This study reports that patients who received the proposed programme demonstrated significant improvement in their level of AD, as compared to the control group. This improvement was observable on all the proposed dimensions of awareness. Interestingly, results from correlation analysis also showed that patients with lower initial AD were those who exhibited a greater degree of improvement following the intervention.

Conclusions: This research provides evidence in favour of the effectiveness of implementing an intervention programme for AD in the context a global rehabilitation process for patients with ABI.

Keywords:

• Self-awareness
• awareness of deficit
• brain injury
• rehabilitation

Funding

Dolores Villalobos has been supported by a predoctoral fellowship financed by the Vice-Chancellor’s Office for Research and Innovation - Camilo José Cela University.

Declaration of interest

The authors report no declaration of interest.