Keiji HASHIMOTO, Masahiro OHASHI, Tomoyuki MORITA,Takatsugu OKAMOTO, Satoshi MIYANO

Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, Kanagawa Rehabilitation Hospital

(Received 2 September 2003; accepted 13 February 2004)

Abstract: The objective of this retrospective study is to investigate the effectiveness of clinical pathways for brain-injured patients in our hospital. We compared two groups of brain-injured patients who were admitted before and after implementation of the clinical pathways. There were 215 patients before and 110 patients after the implementation of the clinical pathways. After introduction of the clinical pathways, the number of in-hospital days were significantly reduced (89.5±46.4 vs 76.1±46.0; p<0.05). On the other hand, no differences were noted between the two groups in improvement of Functional Independence Measure (FIM) scores. This indicated that our clinical pathways for acquired brain injuries worked effectively in reducing the number of in-hospital days without changing functional gain.

Key words: clinical pathway, traumatic brain injury, rehabilitation, cognitive dysfunction