An evaluation of neuropsychological rehabilitation for patients with high spinal cord injuries and brain damage.

This article describes a program of neuropsychological rehabilitation for high cervical SCI patients with psycho-organic syndrome. Traumatic injury to the cervical spine is frequently accompanied by organic damage to the brain, either caused by the same accident that injured the spine or resulting from secondary causes. The result of concomitant brain damage in cervical SCI patients is psycho-organic syndrome, which consists of both cognitive (higher level language functioning, disturbances in memory, language, attention, and thinking) and personality components (mood and behavioral disorders). Existing rehabilitation programs designed either for tetraplegic patients with no neuropsychological impairment, or for brain-damaged patients without tetraplegia, are not suitable for the problems faced by these patients. Accordingly, the authors have developed a Program of Neuropsychological Rehabilitation as a module added to comprehensive rehabilitation for SCI patients. This program was tested in a natural clinical experiment involving 35 SCI patients with tetraplegia and concomitant brain damage undergoing rehabilitation at the Cracow Rehabilitation Center and the Marian Weiss Rehabilitation Center in Konstancin, Poland. The results of the experiment demonstrate that the neuropsychological rehabilitation program is effective in reducing the symptoms of psycho-organic syndrome. The authors discuss the theoretical and clinical implications of the results for the rehabilitation of patients with cervical spine injuries and concomitant brain damage.