This British Society of Rehab Medicine prize-winning poster was presented by Shigeharu Aoki. He made a translation of the European Brain Injury Questionnaire (EBIQ), used it in Japan to collect sample of patient and carer responses, and has plotted the agreement and disagreement found in dyads of carers- and self-rating respondents. The data collected in Japan were compared with a similar dataset collected in routine clinical practice by the Evelyn Community Head Injury Service in Cambridgeshire UK.

1. IMPULSIVITYCOMM
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COMM FATIGUE COG DEP SOMATIC
Aim of our research:
We administered a translation of “European Brain Injury Questionnaire (EBIQ)” to a population of 143 patients
in Japan. Comparison with UK data enables investigation of cross-cultural differences.
Exploring data collected using European Brain Injury
Questionnaire (EBIQ) in a patient population in Japan.
Shigeharu Aoki (1)(2), Andrew Bateman (1), Kate Psaila(3), Judith Allanson (3) (4)
(1)The Oliver Zangwill Centre, (2) Kanagawa Rehabilitation Hospital,
(3)Evelyn Community Head Injury Service (4)Cambridge University Hospital Foundation Trust
Methods:
All cases completed EBIQ Self- and Carer- forms.
Discrepancies between Self and Carer were examined across
each subscale, and we compared Japanese and UK data.
References: 1) Teasdale TW, et al. Subjective experience in brain-injured patients and their close relatives.
A European Brain Injury Questionnaire study. Brain Injury 1997, 11: 543-563
Background
The EBIQ is self-report questionnaire with 63 items (1).
EBIQ has subscales related to domains such as
communication, social communication, fatigue, cognition,
depression, somatic symptoms and impulsivity.
Participants:
The participants with acquired brain injury were
143 cases in Kanagawa Rehabilitation Hospital in Japan and
157 cases in Evelyn Community Head Injury Service in the UK.
(Table 1)
Table 1. Characters of Participants in Japan and UK
(mean±standard deviation),
TBI: traumatic brain injury, SAH: subarachnoid hemorrhage
RESULTS:
We found differences between Self and Carer data in each subscale: (Fig. 1)
There were significant discrepancies between Japan and the UK,
within the fatigue and cognition domains.
In other subscales there were no significant differences.
CONCLUSIONS
These findings indicate that the most common problems reported late after onset were in the fatigue and
cognitive domains in Japan. This may mean that more cognitive education for patients is needed late after
brain injury in Japan and this education should include information about fatigue, a topic often missed.
The education should include carers to achieve a greater shared understanding of post injury difficulties.
Future research will pool data with a larger UK dataset to examine cross-cultural validity using more detailed
analysis techniques.
Discrepancy: X= Self – Carer
ie. X is less, Self is less aware than Carer.
Japanese
(n=143)
British
(n=157)
Age (years)
18 - 69
(39.9±14.7)
16 - 82
(42.5±16.3)
Gender M : F 116：27 109：48
Cause of
brain injury
TBI: 90 cases (63%)
SAH: 25 cases
TBI: 157 cases
(100%)
Time since injury
(months)
1 - 154
(31.0±31.8)
1 - 395
(19.6±42.0)
Figure 1. Discrepancies (=Self – Carer) in each subscale of EBIQ in Japan and the UK dataset
Kanagawa Rehabilitation Hospital
* *p=0.00099 p=0.00028
unaware-ptagreeunaware-proxy
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15
10
5
0
-5
-10
-15
-20
Acknowledgement: We thank the
Evelyn Trust for generous support