Postacute rehabilitation in cognitively impaired patients: comprehensive assessment and tailored interventions.

摘要

This issue of the Journal of the American Medical Directors Association includes a report from Young and colleagues documenting that both cognitively nonimpaired and impaired patients with hip fracture, who had surgical repair and received postacute rehabilitation, experienced functional recovery at one year following postacute rehabilitation discharge. However, the pattern of recovery and the level of function regained at one year largely differ between the two groups. In fact, the cognitively nonimpaired group regained most of their functional independence at one year, whereas for the cognitively impaired group the level of function at one year was similar to that of two months following rehabilitation and yet higher than that reported before starting rehabilitation. Findings from this report suggest that functional recovery is present in the cognitively impaired group, although lower than that observed in the nonimpaired group and this evidence has a notable clinical and public health significance.