Neurorehabilitation of severe acquired brain injury in the time of COVID-19: impact of the absence of caregivers.

Introduction: During the COVID-19 pandemic, several restrictions were imposed to limit the circulation of the infection within communities. Hospitals denied access to the family and friends of inpatients, and thus to caregivers. This observational study evaluated the impact of the physical absence of caregivers during the lockdown period due to the COVID-19 emergency on the rehabilitation of inpatients with severe acquired brain injury (sABI).

Two Ecological Tools for Testing Slowness of Information Processing in Italian Patients with Moderate-to-Severe Traumatic Brain Injury.

Unlabelled: Slowness of Information Processing (SIP) is frequently experienced after traumatic brain injury (TBI); however, the impact of SIP on everyday functioning may be underestimated by standard neuropsychological tests.

Objective: we aimed to adapt two ecological instruments assessing SIP in Italian patients with moderate-to-severe TBI, as formerly proposed by Winkens and colleagues for persons with stroke, testing also its possible relation with other neuropsychological processes and functional outcomes.

Method: we performed an observational study on 37 patients with moderate-to-severe TBI and 35 demographically matched healthy controls, who underwent the Mental Slowness Observation Test (MSOT) and the Mental Slowness Questionnaire (MSQ), which had been adapted through a pilot study on independent sample of participants; extensive neuropsychological and functional evaluations were performed as well.