[Physical therapy for persons with traumatic brain injury]

Traumatic brain injury is a major public health problem and may result in significant impairment of an individual's physical, cognitive, and psychosocial functioning. Therefore, special attention must be paid to physical therapy that plays an important role in early rehabilitation. Physical therapists have the opportunity to apply various scales and tests for assessment of the functional status of patients with traumatic brain injury and effectiveness of physical therapy: Functional Independence Measure, Disability Rating Scale, Barthel Index, Glasgow Coma Scale, Glasgow Outcome Scale, Rancho Los Amigos Scale, Mini-Mental State Examination, etc. This review presents the analysis of morbidity and mortality after traumatic brain injury, possibilities to assess patients' functional status, characteristics of physical therapy, and factors influencing the efficiency of physical therapy. Complications such as contractures, spasticity, sleep disturbances, impaired balance, as well as the attention and behavior disorders, lack of motivation, depression make difficulties in application of physical therapy and rehabilitation for the persons with traumatic brain injury.