Abstract
The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between patients' Functional Independence Measure (FIM) scores, Functional Assessment Measure (FAM) scores and age and their usefulness to predict the outcome of traumatic brain injury in 109 patients. We classified the outcomes of patients in five groups. They either returned to work or school (5), returned home without any help (4), went to a welfare center for further training (3), returned home with help (2), or went to another hospital (1). The number of patients in each group was 5 : 5, 4 : 29, 3 : 21, 2 : 15, and 1 : 39. Admission and discharge FIM scores were 52±28 and 63±27 in the motor subscore and 19±9 and 22±8 in the cognitive subscore. The FAM adjustment to limitations subscores were 2.1±1.7 and 3.3±2.1. Using a regression analysis we determined that 42.1 % of the variance of the outcome could be accounted for by the admission FIM motor subscore. On the other hand, discharge data had a predictive accuracy of 55.0 % when we used classification and regression tree (CART) analyses to predict outcome. Results of the CART analyses indicate that it is possible to be in outcome groups 5 or 4 if the discharge FIM motor subscore is 73 or more and the FAM adjustment to limitation subscore is 4 or more. Thus, not only does physical ability (FIM motor) contribute to the outcome of traumatic brain injury patients, but cognitive (FIM cognitive) and awareness (FAM adjustment to limitations) abilities might also be important.
