An overview of outcome measures used in neuropsychological rehabilitation research on adults with acquired brain injury

Abstract

Outcome measurement is the cornerstone of evidence-based health care including neuropsychological rehabilitation. A complicating factor for outcome measurement in neuropsychological rehabilitation is the enormous number of measures available and the lack of a standard set of outcome measures. As a first step towards such a set, we reviewed intervention evaluation studies of the last 20 years to get an overview of instruments used for measuring outcome. The instruments were divided into two main categories: neuropsychological tests (International Classification of Functioning (ICF) level of functions) and other instruments (all other ICF domains). We considered the most common cognitive domains: memory, attention, executive functions, neglect, perception, apraxia, language/communication and awareness. Instruments used most for measuring outcome were neuropsychological tests (n = 215) in the domains of working memory, reaction times, neglect and aphasia. In the second category (n = 166) the multi-domain instruments were most represented. Several steps can be taken to select a standard set of outcome measures for future use. Next to evaluation of quality and feasibility of the instruments, expert opinion and consensus procedures can be applied.

Human Functioning: Developments and Grand Challenges

“…The other major component of intervention planning for rehabilitation is goal-setting that is patient-oriented (12)(13)(14) as well as the development and application of clinical (15)(16)(17) and patient-reported (18,19) outcome measures and related tools that reflect these goals. There is perhaps nothing more important to rehabilitation as a clinical practice than that practitioners are able to set goals and identify outcomes that represents what is of importance to the beneficiary of rehabilitation interventions.…”

Client experiences with holistic neuropsychological rehabilitation: “It is an ongoing process”

“…Traditionally, outcome measurement has been centred around measuring functional outcome (Ownsworth & Haslam, 2016;van Heugten et al, 2019). However, when interventions become more complex, as is the case for holistic neuropsychological rehabilitation, these outcome domains might not be considered the most important by clients.…”

Feasibility of a minimal dataset for adults with acquired brain injury in Dutch healthcare practice

“…As research into the long-term consequences of acquired brain injury (ABI) continues to grow, the body of collected patient data expands accordingly. However, there is a broad array of outcome domains and available measurement instruments [1][2][3] leading to data that are difficult to aggregate and therefore, compare. This incomparability of research outcomes is a frequently reported limitation of systematic reviews and meta-analyses in the field of ABI [4][5][6].…”