Family needs after brain injury: A cross cultural study

OBJECTIVE

The objective of this study was to explore differences by country in the importance of family needs after traumatic brain injury (TBI), as well as differences in met/unmet needs.

METHOD

Two hundred and seventy-one family members of an individual with TBI in Mexico, Colombia, Spain, Denmark, and Norway completed the Family Needs Questionnaire.

RESULTS

Eight of the ten needs rated as most important globally were from the Health Information subscale. Importance ratings on the Health Information, Professional Support, and Involvement With Care subscales were similar across countries, but Mexican family members rated Instrumental Support needs as less important than Colombian, Spanish, and Danish family members, and also rated their Community Support needs as less important than Danish and Spanish family members. Mexican family member's rated emotional support needs as less important than Colombian, Spanish, and Danish family members. Globally, the needs rated as most often met were from the Health Information subscale, and the most unmet needs were from the Emotional Support subscale.

CONCLUSION

Despite some similarities across countries several differences were identified, and these can help professionals to provide more culturally appropriate rehabilitation services for family members in order to improve informal care for TBI.

Ecological validity of the Multiple Errands Test using predictive models of dysexecutive problems in everyday life

The"dysexecutive syndrome" is composed of a range of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral deficits that are difficult to evaluate using traditional neuropsychological tests. The Multiple Errands Test (MET) was originally developed to systematize the assessment of the more elusive manifestations of the dysexecutive syndrome. The aims of this study were to examining the reliability of the MET and to investigate the predictive ability of its indices to explain a range of "dysexecutive"-related symptoms in everyday life. Thirty patients with acquired brain injury participated in this study. The MET showed an adequate inter-rater reliability and ecological validity. The main performance indices from the MET were able to significantly predict severity of everyday life executive problems, with different indices predicting particular manifestations of different components of executive functions.

[Changes in episodic and semantic memory associated with temporal lobectomy]

INTRODUCTION

Temporal lobectomy (TL) is an effective treatment for drug refractory temporal lobe epilepsy. The main neuropsychological consequences of the intervention are changes in episodic and semantic memory. Aim. To study the consequences of right temporal lobectomy (RTL) and left temporal lobectomy (LTL) on episodic and semantic mnemonic functioning.

PATIENTS AND METHOD

27 patients who had undergone TL in the Hospital Universitario Virgen de las Nieves in Granada were submitted to pre and post surgical evaluation by means of a battery of neuropsychological tests that included episodic and semantic memory tests for both verbal and visual material.

RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS

ANOVA analysis was employed to analyse the pre and post surgical changes for the whole group of patients, and Student s t and Wilcoxon s non parametric test were used for each group of RTL and LTL. No deterioration was found in ipsilateral memory after the intervention, that is to say, in the verbal memory of the patients submitted to LTL and in the visual memory of RTL patients. With regard to contralateral memory, that is, the visual memory of patients submitted to LTL and the verbal memory of RTL patients, the ANOVA analyses of the whole group revealed a statistically significant improvement. The analyses performed for the whole group (LTL and RTL), however, did not reveal any statistically significant changes.