Effect of rehabilitation for persons with traumatic brain injury or stroke – systematic literature search
Mapping review
|Updated
Key message
The Norwegian Knowledge Centre for the Health Services was commissioned to find relevant research about the effectiveness of rehabilitation for patients with traumatic brain injury or stroke. In 2010 we published an overview of systematic reviews about the rehabilitation of patients with traumatic brain injury or stroke. In this publication we concluded that:
“Well-planned and coordinated early discharge of stroke patients from hospitals with follow-up at home by a multidisciplinary team led to a reduction in a combined outcome of death or dependency after 6 months, it reduces length of stay in hospital, and it increases the possibility that patients are living independently in their homes and have taken up daily activities. There is probably no difference in mortality. Early supported discharge is probably less costly than usual practice for stroke patients with mild to moderate strokes.
Interdisciplinary active rehabilitation of stroke patients living at home within one year after the stroke may have no impact on functioning, quality of life and readmissions compared with standard treatment, but we lack good evidence to draw a firm conclusion. We lack evidence to conclude whether the treatment provided by a multidisciplinary team improves the recovery process for patients living at home or in a community based institution one year or more after the first stroke. Patients with a recovery period of one year and more often have a more persistent disability. A multidisciplinary community based team can possibly improve functioning and increase the participation of patients with severe brain injury, but may not lead to improvement in terms of activity and mood compared with written information alone.”
This current publication is an update of the literature search, performed to find more recently published systematic reviews.
We used a previously designed search strategy and searched for systematic reviews published after 2009. We identified a total of 29 references in the database search. There were 17 potentially relevant reviews.