Phd in CLINICAL EXPERIMENTAL NEUROSCIENCE AND PSYCHIATRY

Thesis title: “Validazione di strumenti di misura in persone con patologie neurologiche”

Measuring health status and health interventions is fundamental to guarantee the quality of services and good health for all. For measuring Neurological conditions, different outcome measures are available. These can be categorized into clinician-reported, patient-reported, observer-reported, or performance based outcome measures. Regardless of their category, outcome measures should link within the International Classification of Functioning Disability and Health framework. Many efforts serve to highlight peculiarities of people living with Neurological Diseases according to Body Function and Structures, Activity and Participation, and Personal and Environmental Factors. At the international level, there is a lack of standardized and comparable measures resulting in outcome measures of poor or of un-known quality, which constitutes a waste of resources and, of course, is unethical. However, international researchers already provided different Core-Set for people with different Neurological conditions in the early post- acute phase for a long-term context. Internationally, researchers and clinicians are going to promote evidence-based recommendations for measuring the clinical status in people living with a neurological disease. Clinicians and researchers are encouraged to acquire competence to analyze the psychometric properties of assessment tools. The importance of appropriate assessment is demonstrated by the increasing number of studies devoted to identifying the best criteria to choose and apply, despite conducting an appropriate evaluation remains a difficult task. Indeed, many instruments have been poorly or incompletely validated over time, thus limiting their use for specific diseases or among populations and countries. Hence, a correct way of assessment aims at replacing an empirical approach with a scientific methodology. Despite encouraging results and ongoing processes frequently described and claimed in the literature, improving steadily the quality of assessment still constitutes an important challenge. Therefore, the aim of this PhD thesis is to provide Italian clinicians with the cross-cultural adapted version of some of the most important outcome measure for rehabilitation in people with Neurological conditions.