Published Paper Details:

Background Traumatic brain injury is the leading cause of death and disability after road traffic accident. Coma and persistent vegetative state following traumatic brain injury has more impact on the health and recovery of the patient. There is no standard physiotherapy treatment which is relatively more acceptable. Among them sensory stimulation techniques have shown more marked effects. Despite of various studies and literature application of the sensory stimulation is still in doubt. This study is needed to comprehensively cover the information according to level of evidence and to put into practice. Methodology A preliminary search on the main search engines (Pub med, Embase, and Cochrane databases) was performed to identify therapeutic options commonly adopted to stimulate coma arousal after a TBI, and a systematic bibliographic investigation was carried out to find the more pertinent papers. Around 240 articles identified using search strategies, among them articles are excluded on the basis of title and abstract and then articles selected for the review on the basis of inclusion and exclusion criteria. Result The results of the studies reviewed were positive indicating the potential benefits of using multimodal sensory stimulation in early rehabilitation involving familiar person to arouse comatose patients. Conclusion Evidences support the use of multimodal sensory stimulation in early rehabilitation. The evidences indicate the involvement of family members in early rehabilitation is useful in significantly improving patients condition compared to the patients who received stimulation from nursing and other clinical staff but high-quality studies are needed to calculate the dosage, frequency and technique of application for different sensory stimuli.