Fitness Training After Traumatic Brain Injury

The objective of this project is to compare a three-month supervised fitness centre-based exercise programme to a 3-month unsupervised home-based exercise programme on discharge from inpatient rehabilitation on improving cardiorespiratory fitness and psychosocial functioning in a traumatic brain injured population. We plan to carry out a multi-centre, assessor blinded, randomised controlled trial with a parallel group design to compare the two interventions. We hypothesise that the supervised fitness-centre based programme will provide significantly better outcomes, and that these gains will not only be evident on completion of the programme, but will be maintained on follow-up, thereby demonstrating that investment in a supervised exercise programme can provide beneficial long-term effects.

Inclusion criteria

Patients who have sustained a traumatic brain injury who have completed their inpatient rehabilitation at either of the three Sydney Metropolitan Brain Injury Units (Liverpool, Ryde or Westmead) will be included in this study if they:

• have sustained a very severe or extremely severe traumatic brain injury
• have had a hospital admission of > 1 month
• are able to walk independently at > 1 m/s on discharge
• are able to commit 3 hours per week to a fitness programme
• live within the area serviced by the 3 units

Exclusion criteria

• have a concurrent medical condition for which moderate to high intensity exercise is contraindicated
• are still in Posttraumatic Amnesia (PTA)
• have cognitive or language problems that affect their ability to understand verbal instructions
• have behaviour problems not suitable for a fitness centre environment