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To describe the functional outcome of 19 patients with anterior communicating artery aneurysm following the completion of an inter-disciplinary out-patient rehabilitation programme.Retrospective descriptive study.Community-based inter-disciplinary outpatient programme.n = 19; consecutive referred sample, mean 182 days post-onset; in-patient rehabilitation completed.Inter-disciplinary treatment of functional activities; 2-5 hours/day, 3-5 days/week; mean duration: 55-57 days.Supervision rating scale (SRS) and change in prevalence at admission and discharge of executive impairments, memory, confabulation, apathy, initiation, social inappropriateness and incontinence.Sixty per cent of the patients showed a clinically significant improvement in their SRS from requiring full-time supervision to part-time supervision. Change in SRS was correlated with change in the impairments of executive function, memory and confabulation.Although pervasive impairments associated with this disorder may limit capacity for even moderate independence, substantial reduction in direct supervision by family members may be achieved.

The present study examined the possibility of a dissociation between visual information processing and conscious awareness of that processing in patients with unilateral visual neglect. Implicit processing of visual information was measured in the context of a semantic priming task (Experiment 1) in which patients made lexical decisions to centrally located targets following the presentation of lateralised picture primes. Like normal controls, patients with unilateral neglect showed equivalent priming when related picture primes were presented to the left or to the right visual field. This contrasts with the performance of a patient with a dense left hemianopia without neglect who did not show priming from the affected field.

The oral reading and repetition of nouns was tested in six fluent aphasics at two different times, with the initial testing occurring at least within the first 6 months post-stroke. Results revealed that oral reading was initially more impaired than repetition, and that the latter resolved much more quickly.

Outcome studies from post-acute cognitive rehabilitation programmes vary widely and mostly emphasize changes in neuropsychological measures. More recently, the functional outcomes of patients following cognitive rehabilitation have been reported. This study describes the functional outcomes of 42 traumatically brain-injured patients (29 male, 13 female: average age 28.6 years, time post-injury 50.3 months) following treatment in a structured out-patient post-acute cognitive rehabilitation programme. The programme consisted of a minimum of 6 weeks of treatment and emphasized improvement of the patients' real-life functional abilities and psychological support. The treatment goals were individually established for each patient. Patient improvement was determined by the accomplishment of treatment goals and differences in pre- and post-treatment functional measures and speech pathology cognitive measures. Follow-up at 6, 12 and 18 months determined the maintenance of treatment effects. There was a significant improvement on patients' functional measures after treatment. Cognitive measures were not significantly different after treatment, but there was a trend towards improvement. Functional improvements were independent of age, neuropathological category, injury severity and time post-injury. It is concluded that post-acute traumatic brain injury treatment aimed at retraining real-life functional abilities exclusive of specific cognitive remediation can lead to long-term improvements in independence.

A patient with pure alexia was presented with a series of tachistoscopic tests involving words, letters, pictures, and lines. Low level perceptual processing remained intact. A major deficit was revealed in the speed of identifying orthographic material. This deficit extended to the identification of pictures presented at tachistoscopic durations, although no disturbance in the visual identification of pictures or objects was observed in real time. There were frequent reports of visual imagery associated with the perception of written material. These images cannot account for the patient's partial recovery of reading functions; instead, it appears that the abnormal characteristics of the patient's reading arise because, after a visual stimulus is perceived, an abnormally long period of time is required before the patient can identify the stimulus. It is suggested that pure alexia is the behavioral manifestation of a deficit in speed of visual identification which is not specific to orthographic m...