Procjena i praćenje komunikacijskih sposobnosti osoba s traumatskim ozljedama mozga
Assessment of communication abilities in persons with traumatic brain injuries during rehabilitation

Summary/Abstract: Communication abilities can be affected differently by traumatic brain injury because of differences in the types of impact and the types and severity of brain lesions. The present study used a Croatian version of the Porch Index of Communicative Ability (Porch, 1981) to assess verbal, gesticular and graphic communication abilities in persons with traumatic brain injuries (in 14 men and women aged 21-62 years). Assessments were performed three times at intervals of 3 months during rehabilitation at a specialized clinic in Krapinske Toplice. Data were analyzed using uni- and multivariate analyses. The Friedman nonparametric test was used to assess the significance of differences between small dependent samples. PROM software (Nikolić, 1997) was used to compare quantitative and qualitative changes between two time points within one sample. The results indicate that rehabilitation was more effective for gesticular abilities, less effective for verbal abilities, and least effective for graphic abilities, reflecting the presence of pareses and plegias of extremities. The results point to the importance of targeting certain communication abilities during early rehabilitation after brain injury.

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