Active clinical trials for "Brain Injuries"

This study will test if patients with moderate to severe traumatic brain injuries also have endocrine abnormalities, examine any existing relationships among fatigue, depression and endocrine abnormalities, and the relationship between endocrine abnormalities, quality of life, and community integration.

This study utilizes a novel technique-expressive arts therapy-to facilitate social integration for youth recovering from acquired brain injury (ABI). Expressive arts therapy is defined as the use of the arts and artistic media to explore psychological aspects of life. An expressive art (also referred to as 'creative arts' or even just 'arts') encompasses drama, music, art (visual arts such as painting, sculpture etc) and dance/movement. It has great potential to improve community integration for youth recovering from ABI, through facilitating skills required for successful social communication and social cognition. It is hypothesized to improve social and emotional functioning compared to a less structured creative arts program. It is expected that a combination of directed group activities and self-reflection within a creative learning context will improve emotional awareness and social and community integration to a greater degree than a non-expressive creative arts therapy group, in youth who have suffered an ABIAs community integration enables meaningful and productive occupational engagement, enabling opportunities for occupational engagement through increased community integration would greatly enhance the quality of life of adolescents with ABI.

OBJECTIVES: I. Determine the randomness of adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) and cortisol secretion using approximate entropy in patients who have sustained a head injury. II. Determine the correlation between randomness of ACTH and cortisol secretion and stages of sleep in these patients.

This study uses a Doppler ultrasound technique being developed at the University of Leicester called 'Brain Tissue Velocimetry" (Brain TV), to investigate brain tissue motion over the cardiac cycle.

This study aims at understanding irony comprehension ability of Chinese speaking patients with TBI through a series of self-made stories. Each story contains two characters having a conversation, and one of them would give a figurative (which is, ironic) or literal statement at the end of the story. The participants are asked to figure out its meaning.

Investigators aim to assess sensitivity and specificity of transcranial doppler in ruling out intracranial hypertension in all patients admitted to intensive care unit for brain injury and needing Intracranial Pressure (ICP) monitoring (according to international guidelines). Non invasive ICP measurement through the use of transcranial doppler will be carried out before and after standard invasive ICP monitoring placement.

The proportion of patients who return to work after surviving severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) has been estimated in number of studies but results do not agree.This may be due to complex interaction between many factors, including available rehabilitation services. In Denmark rehabilitation services vary been regions and municipalities. Hospital based rehabilitation is organized by the regions. Rehabilitation outside the hospitals is organized by the municipalities The first purpose of this study is to investigate a possible link between centralized hospital based rehabilitation and better return to work / quality of life. The second purpose is to investigate whether municipality size affects quality of life and return to work after severe TBI. Data on return to work are derived from a national register on labor market attachment. Data on quality of life are derived from a questionnaire. The study population is identified from the Danish Head Trauma Database. The completeness and accuracy of the database will be investigated as the first part of the project.

The objective of the protocol is to pursue the long-term follow-up of a large cohort of severe traumatic brain injury patients. This outcome is to be described in terms of activity, participation, quality of life, socio-professional outcome, economical consequences and impact on caregivers, and in relation to health care provision. Secondary objectives are to measure the impact on outcome of several predictive factors; to evaluate evolution of patients since the last (four-year) evaluation.

Family-centred care (FCS) is considered the best practice in providing rehabilitation to children with disabilities and special needs. Family-centred care has been described as a partnership approach to healthcare decision making. As a philosophy of healthcare, today many multidisciplinary healthcare facilities have organized their services according to a family-centred approach. TheMeasure of Processes of Care (MPOC) is the most widely used instrument to assess parents' self-reported experiences of family-centred behaviours of rehabilitation services providers. The aim of this study is to translate the scale to Turkish and to determine validity and reliability of The Measure of Processes of Care (MPOC 56- 20- SP)

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in the US. The CDC states that 1.7 million people sustain a traumatic brain injury each year, with death occurring in 52,000 of these injured patients. It is also estimated that 275,000 yearly require hospitalization. The costs of TBI can be devastating to our society, with the 2010 economic cost estimated to be approximately $76.5 billion. 90% of this cost involves fatal or hospitalized brain injured patients. Furthermore, survivors of traumatic brain injury have high rates of institutionalization, readmission, and disability. The prediction of prognosis in severe TBI is a difficult problem for physicians. Prognosis evaluation in the acute phase of care varies widely among physicians caring for these patients[3]. With prognosis often in doubt, physicians have difficulty leading families and patients toward the most appropriate treatment which often leads to expensive testing and patient management. The Brain Trauma Foundation has recommended several early indicators of prognosis in severe TBI, including age, hypotension, CT scan features, Glasgow Outcome Scale score, and pupillary diameter with light reflexes. Pupillary diameter and light reflexes have been extensively studied, however accurate measurements of these prognostic factors have not been performed due to a lack of standardized measuring procedure. A new device has been validated to measure both pupil size and reactivity using infrared pupillometry. This device has also been studied to create the Neurological Pupil Index (NPi) as a measure of pupillary reactivity. The NPi has been shown to correlate with intracranial pressure readings, however there are no studies correlating the pupillometer findings with outcome measures in TBI. This study will prospectively evaluate the pupillometer readings of pupillary size and reactivity (NPi) to test the hypothesis that the NPi is a realiable predictor of 30-day outcomes in patients with severe TBI.