Assessing the mental health needs of Yazidi adolescents and young adults in an Iraqi Kurdi IDP Camp: a focus group study.

Background: Internally displaced people (IDP) in Iraq are 1.2 million (as March 2023). Protracted refugee status endangers the mental health, especially of minorities who survived persecution and conflict, such as the Yazidis.

The role of F-18 FDG PET/CT in the prognosis of patients with hypoxic/anoxic brain injury after cardio-circulatory arrest.

Background: Advances in resuscitation techniques have resulted in more patients surviving cardio-circulatory arrest (CA) and consequently developing hypoxic/anoxic brain damage. The aim of this study is to evaluate the role of PET/CT (Positron Emission Tomography/Computerized Tomography scan) with F-18 FDG (F-18 fluorodeoxyglucose) during the early rehabilitative hospitalization phase in determining the V/C (Vermis/Cerebellar) ratio as a prognostic index to predict patient outcome, as defined by clinical evaluation scales.

Methods: This is a single-center retrospective study of 37 consecutive adult patients admitted to the neurorehabilitation center between January 2011 and June 2019.

iColon, a patient-focused mobile application for perioperative care in colorectal surgery: an observational, real-world study protocol.

Introduction: The enhanced recovery after surgery (ERAS) protocol provides optimised care guidelines for patients undergoing elective colorectal surgery. To ensure high compliance with active ERAS elements, patients must be educated to actively participate in the perioperative care pathway. Mobile health is a rapidly expanding area of the digital health sector that is effective in educating and engaging patients during follow-up.

Back in control of intentional action: Improvement of ideomotor apraxia by mirror box treatment.

Objectives: A novel method of rehabilitation for ideomotor apraxia (IMA), using a modified version of the mirror box (MB), is proposed. The rationale is based on the theory that disrupted body representation occurs in IMA and that MB training may improve body representation. In the present MB training, patients observed and reproduced movements made by the experimenter in a mirror.

Anosognosia for theory of mind deficits: A single case study and a review of the literature.

Being aware of one's own ability to interact socially is crucial to everyday life. After a brain injury, patients may lose their capacity to understand others' intentions and beliefs, that is, the Theory of Mind (ToM). To date, the debate on the association between ToM and other cognitive deficits (in particular executive functions and behavioural disorders) remains open and data regarding awareness of ToM deficits are meagre.

Welcoming back my arm: affective touch increases body ownership following right-hemisphere stroke.

Right-hemisphere stroke can impair the ability to recognize one's contralesional body parts as belonging to one's self. The study of this so-called 'disturbed sense of limb ownership' can provide unique insights into the neurocognitive mechanisms of body ownership. In this study, we address a hypothesis built upon experimental studies on body ownership in healthy volunteers.

Rehabilitation and respiratory management in the acute and early post-acute phase. "Instant paper from the field" on rehabilitation answers to the COVID-19 emergency.

COVID-19 is a respiratory infectious disease that can cause respiratory, physical and psychological long-term dysfunctions in patients. First recommendations on respiratory management were published, but they were not based on the specific needs due to COVID-19. In this paper we share the early experiences from the clinical field in Northern Italy, where the epidemic started in February.

Visuo-motor and interoceptive influences on peripersonal space representation following spinal cord injury.

Peripersonal space (PPS) representation is modulated by information coming from the body. In paraplegic individuals, whose lower limb sensory-motor functions are impaired or completely lost, the representation of PPS around the feet is reduced. However, passive motion can have short-term restorative effects.

Anosognosia for limb and bucco-facial apraxia as inferred from the recognition of gestural errors.

Anosognosia is a multifaceted syndrome characterized by a lack of awareness of motor, cognitive, or emotional deficits. While most studies have focused on basic motor disorders such as hemiplegia, only recently, the issue of whether anosognosia also concerns higher-order motor disorders like apraxia has been addressed. Here, we explore the existence of a specific form of anosognosia for apraxia in forty patients with uni-hemispheric vascular lesions.

Serratus plane block for video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery major lung resection: a randomized controlled trial.

Objectives: The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of 2 different analgesic approaches on pain, postoperative rehabilitation exercises and rescue analgesics of 2 groups of patients undergoing video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS) major lung resection for cancer.

Methods: A total of 94 patients undergoing a VATS major lung resection were randomly allocated to 2 groups: the control group received intravenous and oral (i.e.

Recovery from tactile agnosia: a single case study.

In a patient suffering from tactile agnosia a comparison was made (using the ABABAB paradigm) between three blocks of neuropsychological rehabilitation sessions involving off-line anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (anodal-tDCS) and three blocks of rehabilitation sessions without tDCS. During the blocks with anodal-tDCS, the stimulation was administered in counterbalanced order to two sites: i) the perilesional parietal area (specific stimulation) and ii) an occipital area far from the lesion (nonspecific stimulation).Rehabilitation associated with anodal-tDCS (in particular in the perilesional areas) is more efficacious than without stimulation.

Anosognosia for hemiplegia as a tripartite disconnection syndrome.

The syndrome of Anosognosia for Hemiplegia (AHP) can provide unique insights into the neurocognitive processes of motor awareness. Yet, prior studies have only explored predominately discreet lesions. Using advanced structural neuroimaging methods in 174 patients with a right-hemisphere stroke, we were able to identify three neural systems that contribute to AHP, when disconnected or directly damaged: the (i) premotor loop (ii) limbic system, and (iii) ventral attentional network.

Embodying their own wheelchair modifies extrapersonal space perception in people with spinal cord injury.

Despite the many links between body representation, acting and perceiving the environment, no research has to date explored whether specific tool embodiment in conditions of sensorimotor deprivation influences extrapersonal space perception. We tested 20 spinal cord injured (SCI) individuals to investigate whether specific wheelchair embodiment interacts with extrapersonal space representation. As a measure of wheelchair embodiment, we used a Body View Enhancement Task in which participants (either sitting in their own wheelchair or in one which they had never used before) were asked to respond promptly to flashing lights presented on their above- and below-lesion body parts.

Anticipation of wheelchair and rollerblade actions in spinal cord injured people, rollerbladers, and physiotherapists.

Embodied Cognition Theories (ECT) postulate that higher-order cognition is heavily influenced by sensorimotor signals. We explored the active role of somatosensory afferents and motor efferents in modulating the perception of actions in people who have suffered a massive body-brain disconnection because of spinal cord injury (SCI), which leads to sensory-motor loss below the lesion. We assessed whether the habitual use of a wheelchair enhances the capacity to anticipate the endings of tool-related actions, with respect to actions that have become impossible.

Neurocognitive Benefits of Physiotherapy for Spinal Cord Injury.

Spinal cord injury (SCI) interrupts the brain-body input-output exchange and modifies the mental representation of disconnected body parts, with decreased reliance on sensorimotor aspects of body representation and increased weighting of visuospatial ones. We hypothesized that physiotherapy-related benefits might extend to the re-establishment of the typical interplay between these two types of strategies. To test this hypothesis, we asked 42 participants (21 individuals with SCI pre- and post-physiotherapy, plus 21 controls) to perform mental rotation of corporal images (a cognitive task than can activate one or the other strategy).

Epidemiological and clinical characteristics of 492 patients in a vegetative state in 29 Italian rehabilitation units. What about outcome?

Recent studies on recovery of consciousness of subjects in a vegetative state (VS) admitted to rehabilitation units have focused mainly on the identification of prognostic factors, whereas few studies have focused on outcome. The aim of this study was to compare demographic and clinical data and report functional outcome of patients in a VS due to severe acquired brain injury (ABI) of different aetiologies. The study was a retrospective multicentre cohort study and involved 492 patients in a VS due to traumatic (TBI) or non-traumatic (NTBI) severe ABI admitted to 29 Italian rehabilitation units.

Analysis of Italian regulations on pathways of care for patients in a vegetative or minimally conscious state.

Different rehabilitation models for persons diagnosed with disorders of consciousness have been proposed in Europe during the last decade. In Italy, the Ministry of Health has defined a national healthcare model, although, to date, there is a lack of information on how this has been implemented at regional level. The INCARICO project collected information on different regional regulations, analysing ethical aspects and mapping care facilities (numbers of beds and medical units) in eleven regional territories.

Care pathways models and clinical outcomes in Disorders of consciousness.

Objective: Patients with Disorders of consciousness, are persons with extremely low functioning levels and represent a challenge for health care systems due to their high needs of facilitating environmental factors. Despite a common Italian health care pathway for these patients, no studies have analyzed information on how each region have implemented it in its welfare system correlating data with patients' clinical outcomes.

Materials And Methods: A multicenter observational pilot study was realized.

Modulating anosognosia for hemiplegia: The role of dangerous actions in emergent awareness.

Anosognosia for hemiplegia is a lack of awareness of motor deficits following a right hemisphere lesion. Residual forms of awareness co-occur with an explicit denial of hemiplegia. The term emergent awareness refers to a condition in which awareness of motor deficits is reported verbally during the actual performance of an action involving the affected body part.

Corporeal illusions in chronic spinal cord injuries.

While several studies have investigated corporeal illusions in patients who have suffered from a stroke or undergone an amputation, only anecdotal or single case reports have explored this phenomenon after spinal cord injury. Here we examine various different types of bodily misperceptions in a comparatively large group of 49 people with spinal cord injury in the post-acute and chronic phases after the traumatic lesion onset. An extensive battery of questionnaires concerning a variety of body related feelings was administered and the results were correlated to the main clinical variables.

VRT (verbal reasoning test): a new test for assessment of verbal reasoning. Test realization and Italian normative data from a multicentric study.

Verbal reasoning is a complex, multicomponent function, which involves activation of functional processes and neural circuits distributed in both brain hemispheres. Thus, this ability is often impaired after brain injury. The aim of the present study is to describe the construction of a new verbal reasoning test (VRT) for patients with brain injury and to provide normative values in a sample of healthy Italian participants.