Communicative and swallowing disorders in anoxic patients: A retrospective study on clinical outcomes and performance measures.

Background: Anoxic brain injury (ABI) is a neurological condition associated to a severe deterioration of brain functioning, whose symptomatology and clinical outcomes may be heterogeneous: cognitive deficits, language disorders like dysarthria and swallowing impairments. Nevertheless, there is still a lack of information on the rehabilitation outcomes.

Objective: To confirm the occurrence of communication and swallowing deficits in 37 ABI patients and to examine whether intensive rehabilitation may contribute to any improvements and its relation to ABI severity and functional autonomy.