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Review
. 2021;48(4):451-467.
doi: 10.3233/NRE-210024.

Narrative review of clinical practice guidelines for treating people with moderate or severe traumatic brain injury

Lynn H Gerber  1   2 , Rati Deshpande  2 , Ali Moosvi  2 , Ross Zafonte  3 , Tamara Bushnik  4 , Steven Garfinkel  5 , Cindy Cai  5
Affiliations
Review

Narrative review of clinical practice guidelines for treating people with moderate or severe traumatic brain injury

Lynn H Gerber et al. NeuroRehabilitation. 2021.

Abstract

Background: Practice guidelines (CPGs) provide informed treatment recommendations from systematic reviews and assessment of the benefits and harms that are intended to optimize patient care. Review of CPGs addressing rehabilitation for people with moderate/severe traumatic brain injury (TBI), has not been fully investigated.

Objective: Identify published, vetted, clinical practice guidelines that address rehabilitation for people with moderate/severe TBI.

Methods: Six data bases were accessed using key word search terms: "Traumatic Brain Injury" and "Clinical Practice Guidelines" and "Rehabilitation". Further inclusions included "adult" and "moderate or severe". Exclusions included: "mild" and "concussive injury". Three reviewers read abstracts and manuscripts for final inclusion. The AGREE II template was applied for additional appraisal.

Results: There were 767 articles retrieved using the search terms, 520 were eliminated because of content irrelevance; and 157 did not specify rehabilitation treatment or did not follow a process for CPGs. A total of 17 CPGs met all criteria and only 4 of these met all AGREE II criteria.

Conclusion: There are few CPGs addressing rehabilitation for people with moderate/severe TBI. More interventional trials are needed to determine treatment effectiveness. Timely and methodologically sound vetting of studies are needed to ensure CPG reliability and facilitate access to quality, effective treatment for people with moderate/severe TBI.

Keywords: Clinical practice guidelines; rehabilitation; traumatic brain injury.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have nothing to declare.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
The PRISMA flowchart of the results from the database searches.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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