The Effect of Cognitive Rehabilitation Program for Traumatic Brain Injury Patients

외상성 뇌손상 환자를 위한 인지재활 프로그램의 효과

Objectives:The purpose of this study was to develop a cognitive rehabilitation program and to investigate the effect of the program that restores the deficiency of memory, which is necessary to operate on high cognitive function such as problem-solving or judgement, for TBI(traumatic brain injury) patients. Methods:Sixteen TBI patients participated in this study. The inclusion criteria were : 1) aged 18 to 60 ; 2) higher than IQ 80 ; 3) lower than MMSE-K 25 and K-MAS(Korean version of Memory Assessment Scale) 85. We administered our program to an experimental group(N=8) in order to improve attention and memory for 4 weeks(total 12 section). Our program was not administrated to a control group(N=8) for 4 weeks. After administrating this program, we measured MMSE-K and K-MAS for the experimental and control groups. Results:The findings of the study were as follows. 1) the experimental group showed significant improvement on MMSE-K score in comparison with baseline, but the control group did not. 2) the experimental group showed significant improvement on K-MAS score in comparison with baseline, but the control group did not. In particular, among the three subscales of K-MAS, only verbal memory scale revealed significant improvement, while visual and short-term memory scales revealed no differences. Conclusion:Our cognitive rehabilitation program improves cognitive state and memory, particulary verbal memory, for TBI patients. These results imply that our program aids in rehabilitation of basic cognition such as memory which is necessary to operate on high cognitive function such as problem-solving or judgement, for TBI(traumatic brain injury) patients.