BIAA/Mount Sinai TBI Rehabilitation Guidelines Project Under Way

In July, the Brain Injury Association of America (BIAA) announced that it has awarded a grant to the Brain Injury Research Center at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. The grant funds a three-year investigation to develop Guidelines for the Rehabilitation and Disease Management of Adults with Moderate to Severe Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI).

Panels comprised of the nation’s top brain injury researchers and clinicians, as well as family members of people with brain injuries, met in Dallas, Texas on September 9 and 10 to kick off the three-year project, which is designed to advance research and appropriate treatment for people with brain injuries.

“Individuals who sustain TBIs rarely have access to rehabilitation of sufficient timing, scope, duration, and intensity that would allow them to recover to the maximum extent possible,” said Susan Connors, President and CEO of BIAA. “When a person’s care is delayed, discontinued, or denied altogether, the result is often increased re-hospitalization rates and greater levels of disability. This creates a cycle of joblessness, homelessness, and dependence on public programs.”

BIAA and Mount Sinai are addressing this problem head-on. Over the next three years, panelists will review and assess evidence in functional, medical, cognitive, behavioral, and social domains to identify and fully describe the continuum of care available following TBI. They will then determine the evidence for various rehabilitative treatments and, based on that evidence and/or expert opinion, make recommendations for treatment and management in various settings. Upon project completion they will produce a document that supports improvements in the quality and consistency of rehabilitation treatment and broadly disseminate the recommendations to payer, provider, patient and advocacy communities in an effort to increase access to care.

“This project will have a significant impact on outcomes for people living with TBI,” said Principal Investigator Wayne Gordon, Ph.D., ABPP/Cn of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “It will provide guidelines for quality of care and consistency of treatment to help patients recover to the fullest extent possible.”

The goal of the project is to learn how much rehabilitation adult patients with moderate to severe TBI should receive, in what setting, and at what time. BIAA and Mount Sinai have pledged to keep the brain injury community fully informed and invite input and feedback at certain key points along the way. Visit www.biausa.org/professionals/research/treatment-guidelines-project for more information.