The SCIRehab Project: What rehabilitation interventions are most strongly associated with positive outcomes after spinal cord injury?

The SCIRehab project aimed to identify which inpatient rehabilitation treatments are most effective for individuals with traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI). It considered outcomes at discharge and one year post-injury, while accounting for patient and injury characteristics. The study used a Practice-Based Evidence (PBE) approach, documenting treatment details to understand how variations in treatment, along with patient and injury differences, relate to outcome variations. The project involved a large effort to document the rehabilitation process and understand the relationships between various rehabilitation services and optimal outcomes for SCI patients.

• 1
  Patient and injury differences account for the majority of variation in outcomes. The variation in total hours of treatments add explanatory power to understanding outcomes.
• 2
  Some positive relationships, some negative relationships, and many relationships that are not significant were identified between treatment interventions and outcomes.
• 3
  As patient groupings become more homogeneous, the influence of patient characteristics becomes less influential and we see more explained variance being contributed by discipline-specific treatments.