Neuropsychological rehabilitation in patients with cerebral vascular damage: A systematic review of literature

Abstract

We performed a systematic literature review using the databases Web of Science, Pubmed and Bireme covering the years 2000 to 2011, using the terms “reabilitação cognitiva e acidente vascular cerebral” and “cognitive rehabilitation and stroke”. The results showed a paucity of publications on this subject in the international and Brazilian national literatures. We identified only 19 articles, and these reported mostly language rehabilitation exploring virtual environments for rehabilitation with brief and infrequent description of the methodology. The programs showed to be effective in improving tasks of daily living, suggesting their ecologic validity. We concluded that the rehabilitation process needs to be further explored and systematically analyzed and that the effective techniques should be disclosed and published in detail.