Background: This pilot study examined the relationship between the Coma Recovery Scale-Revised (CRS-R) and the five subparts of the thalamocortical tract in chronic patients with hypoxic–ischemic brain injury by diffusion tensor tractography (D...
Prognosis of prolonged Disorders of Consciousness (pDoC) is influenced by patients’ clinical diagnosis and Coma Recovery Scale-Revised (CRS-R) total score. We compared the prognostic accuracy of a novel Consciousness Domain Index (CDI) with tha...
Background/Objectives: Persons with disorders of consciousness (DoCs) may perceive pain without being able to communicate their discomfort. The Nociception Coma Scale (NCS) and its revised form (NCS-R) have been proposed to assess nociception in pers...
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), traumatic brain injury (TBI) is the leading cause of loss of consciousness, long-term disability, and death in children and young adults (age 1 to 44). Currently, there are no United...
Background: Disorders of consciousness (DoCs) include unresponsive wakefulness syndrome (UWS) and minimally conscious state (MCS). Critical illness polyneuropathy and myopathy (CIPNM) is frequent in severe acquired brain injuries and impacts function...
High-definition transcranial direct current stimulation (HD-tDCS) has been shown to play an important role in improving consciousness in patients with disorders of consciousness (DOCs), but its neuroelectrophysiological evidence is still lacking. To...
The temperature of the brain can reflect the activity of its different regions, allowing us to evaluate the connections between them. A study involving 111 patients in a vegetative state or minimally conscious state used microwave radiometry to measu...
As medical technology continues to improve, many patients diagnosed with brain injury survive after treatments but are still in a coma. Further, multiple clinical studies have demonstrated recovery of consciousness after transcranial direct current s...
Recent research indicates prolonged disorders of consciousness (PDOC) result from structural and functional impairments to key cortical and subcortical networks, including the default mode network (DMN) and the anterior forebrain mesocircuit (AFM). H...
Speech therapy can be part of the care pathway for patients recovering from comas and presenting a disorder of consciousness (DOC). Although there are no official recommendations for speech therapy follow-up, neuroscientific studies suggest that rele...
Objective: The aim of this study is to compare the secretion level of nocturnal melatonin and the characteristics of the peripheral part of the visual analyzer in patients with chronic disorders of consciousness (DOC). Materials and Methods: We studi...
Monitoring the level of responsiveness of patients with Disorders of Consciousness (DoCs) represents an issue in all the settings where there is not the daily presence of clinicians, such as long-term and domestic settings. The involvement of patient...
Background/Objectives: The Lowenstein Communication Scale (LCS) is a tool for the evaluation of communicative performance in patients with disorders of consciousness (DOC). This study investigated the reliability and validity of the LCS. Methods: We...
We propose a new set of clinical variables for a more accurate early prediction of safe decannulation in patients with severe acquired brain injury (ABI), during a post-acute rehabilitation course. Starting from the already validated DecaPreT scale,...
Traumatic brain injury is damage to the brain occurring after birth, often resulting in the deterioration of cognitive, behavioural, and emotional functions. Neuropsychological evaluation can assist clinicians to better assess the patient’s cli...
17 April 2021
Introduction: The ability to communicate is one of the fundamental factors underlying human relationships. Severe brain damage and disorders of consciousness may indispose a person to participate in everyday social and family life. In spite of this f...
This work aims to evaluate the prognostic value of the demographical and clinical data on long-term outcomes (up to 12 months) in patients with severe acquired brain injury with vegetative state/unresponsive wakefulness syndrome (VS/UWS/UWS) or a min...
Background: Music stimulation is considered a valuable form of intervention in disorders of consciousness (DoC); for instance, verticalization may improve motor and cognitive recovery. Our purpose is to investigate the effects of a novel rehabilitati...
Accurate estimation of the neurobehavioral progress of patients with unresponsive wakefulness syndrome (UWS) is essential to anticipate their most likely clinical course and guide clinical decision making. Although different studies have described th...
Background: Disorders of Consciousness (DoC) following acute brain injuries, such as intracerebral hemorrhage, present significant clinical challenges in intensive care and rehabilitation settings. Early multidisciplinary interventions, including phy...
Chronic disorders of consciousness cause a total or partial and fluctuating unawareness of the surrounding environment. Virtual reality (VR) can be useful as a diagnostic and/or a neurorehabilitation tool, and its effects can be monitored by means of...
Introduction: The Wessex Head Injury Matrix (WHIM) was developed to assess patients with disorders of consciousness (DOC) and was tested in terms of inter-rater reliability (IRR) and test–retest reliability (TRR) in the year 2000. The American...
Background: The Coma Recovery Scale–Revised (CRS-R) is the gold standard for diagnosing chronic disorders of consciousness (DoC); however, its clinical utility is limited by lengthy administration and the need for specialized training. The Simp...
Traumatic brain injury, cardiac arrest, intracerebral hemorrhage, and ischemic stroke may cause disorders of consciousness (DoC). Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) has been used to promote the recovery of disorders of consciousness...
Understanding the patterns of brain glucose metabolism and connectivity in hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HIE) patients with prolonged disorders of consciousness (DOC) may be of positive significance to the accurate assessment of consciousness and...
Frontal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) and parietal tDCS are effective for treating disorders of consciousness (DoC); however, the relative efficacies of these techniques have yet to be determined. This paper compares the neuromodulat...
Background. Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (lDLPFC) was reported to promote the recovery of signs of consciousness in some patients in a minimally conscious state (MCS), but its electrophys...
Disorders of consciousness (DoC) due to severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) are associated with severe disability and an alteration of cortical activation, angiogenesis, and inflammation, which are crucial elements for behavioural recovery. This expl...
Touch, particularly affective touch mediated by C-tactile fibers, plays a key role in emotional regulation and therapeutic interventions. However, tactile stimulation is underutilized in sensory stimulation (SS) protocols for brain injury patients, d...
Introduction: Serum biomarkers, such as Neurofilament Light (NF-L), Glial Fibrillary Acidic Protein (GFAP), Ubiquitin C-terminal Hydrolase (UCH-L1), and Total-tau (T-Tau) have been proposed for outcome prediction in the acute phase of severe traumati...
Pain assessment and management in patients with disorders of consciousness (DOC) is a challenging and important aspect of care, with implications for detecting consciousness and promoting recovery. This narrative review explores the role of pain in c...
Background: Patients who are in a coma, a vegetative state or a minimally conscious state present a clinical challenge for neurological assessment, which is a prerequisite for establishing a prognosis and planning management. Several scales have been...
Background/Objectives: Developments in eye-tracking technology are opening up new possibilities for diagnosing patients in a state of minimal consciousness because they can provide information on visual behavior, and the movements of the eyeballs are...
Background: Navigated repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) is a promising tool for neuromodulation. In previous studies it has been shown that the activity of the default mode network (DMN) areas, particularly of its key region—t...
To test the ability of different entropy measures to classify patients with different conditions of chronic disorder of consciousness, we applied the Lempel–Ziv complexity, the amplitude coalition entropy (ACE), and the synchrony coalition entr...
Background: Decompressive craniectomy (DC) is a life-saving intervention for refractory intracranial pressure (ICP). While outcomes in adults are well documented, pediatric data, especially concerning pupillomotor dysfunction, remain limited. Anisoco...