TY - JOUR PY - 2018// TI - The value of incorporating personally relevant stimuli into consciousness assessment with the Coma Recovery Scale - Revised: a pilot study JO - Journal of rehabilitation medicine A1 - Stenberg, Jonas A1 - Godbolt, Alison K. A1 - Möller, Marika C. SP - 253 EP - 260 VL - 50 IS - 3 N2 - OBJECTIVE: To explore whether the use of personally relevant stimuli, for some tasks in the Coma Recovery Scale - Revised (CRS-R), generates more responses in patients with prolonged disorders of consciousness compared with neutral stimuli.

DESIGN: Multiple single-case design. SUBJECTS: Three patients with prolonged disorders of consciousness recruited from an inpatient department at a regional brain injury rehabilitation clinic in Stockholm, Sweden.

METHODS: Patients were repeatedly assessed with the CRS-R. Randomization tests (bootstrapping) were used to compare the number of responses generated by personally relevant and neutral stimuli on 5 items in the CRS-R.

RESULTS: Compared with neutral stimuli, photographs of relatives generated significantly more visual fixations. A mirror generated visual pursuit to a significantly greater extent than other self-relevant stimuli. On other items, no significant differences between neutral and personally relevant stimuli were seen.

CONCLUSION: Personally relevant visual stimuli may minimize the risk of missing visual fixation, compared with the neutral stimuli used in the current gold standard behavioural assessment measure (CRS-R). However, due to the single-subject design this conclusion is tentative and more research is needed.

Language: en

LA - en SN - 1650-1977 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.2340/16501977-2309 ID - ref1 ER -