BR - Patient Visitor Information

While you or a loved one is at Bryn Mawr Rehab Hospital, you may here your physician use a lot of confusing technical jargon. Here's a list of common medical terms and phrases with their definitions.

Activities of Daily Living: Varied components of an individual's self-care routine, including feeding, toileting, dressing, bathing and grooming.

Affect: the Motor Expression of Emotion: How the person appears externally as opposed to how the person feels; sometimes affect (such as crying) may not imply the usual associated feeling (i.e., sadness) in brain-injured patients.

Amnesia: Loss or impairment of memory function secondary to brain dysfunction.

Aneurysm: A localized, abnormal dilation of a blood vessel due to a defect or weakness in the vessel wall.

Anomia: Difficulty naming things.

Anoxia: Lack of oxygen caused by respiratory or circulatory problems.

Anticoagulants: Ddrugs that delay or prevent blood clotting.

Anti-Convulsants/Anti-Seizure: Medications used to prevent seizures.

Antithrombotics: Drugs that prevent blood clots from forming.

Aphasia: A loss of previously acquired language function due to damage to the brain; this typically includes impaired comprehension, reading, spelling, and writing as well as verbal expression.

Apraxia: An inability to perform skilled motor acts not attributable to impaired motor strength or coordination, sensation or comprehension; patients may be able to perform an activity spontaneously which they cannot perform on command.

Arousal: A measure of the quantity of wakefulness or consciousness as opposed to its content; lethargic patients have decreased arousal, whereas agitated patients often have increased arousal.

Arteriovenous Malformation (AVM): A malformation of the arteries and veins in the brain. These blood vessels are thin and fragile, and may cause bleeding in the brain.

Ataxia: Impaired balance of the body or impaired coordination of an arm or leg.

Attention: A patient's ability to focus on selected stimuli without distraction and to appropriately shift between stimuli.

Behavior Management Program: Specific plans of care developed by the treatment team to assist patients in appropriate social skills and interactions with others.

Behavior Modification: A form of therapy that uses the principles of learning to change behavior. This includes specific clinical management strategies that reward (reinforce) desired behaviors and discourage (inhibit) undesirable ones. This approach increases the number of more appropriate behaviors and decreases the number of less appropriate behaviors. The ultimate goal of behavior modification is for the individual to learn to control his/her own behavior without positive or negative consequences being imposed from outside.

Behavioral Neurologist: A physician with special training in the management of patients with cognitive or behavior difficulties as a result of brain injury or disease.

Brain Stem Injury: An injury to a part of the brain that can affect such things as movement, muscle tone, consciousness, and eye movements.

Cerebral Hemorrhage: Bleeding inside the brain, caused when a diseased blood vessel bursts and floods surrounding brain tissue with blood.

Cerebral Infarction: The damage that occurs to the brain when the blood supply is interrupted; a stroke.

Cerebral Vascular Accident (CVA): The damage that occurs to the brain when the blood supply is interrupted; a stroke.

Cognition: A general term referring to all aspects of knowledge and thinking, including attention, concentration, memory, planning, and problem solving.

Cognitive Retraining: A means by which he brain relearns some of the skills it has lost.

Cognitive Therapy: A means by which the brain relearns some of the skills it has lost as a result of brain injury.

Computerized Axial Tomography (Cat Scan): Computer x-ray that takes many pictures of the brain at different levels to locate the site and type of damage to the brain. The test, also called a CT scan, is often done soon after the injury to assess the damage and then repeated over time.

Coma: A clinical state of unresponsiveness resulting in no speech and no following of commands.

Concussion: A temporary loss of consciousness from traumatic brain injury.

Contusion: A bruise to a part of the brain.

Decubitus: An opening of the skin, obtained in bed, which requires special topical treatment and body positioning to heal. Also called a pressure ulcer or pressure sore.

Denial: Lack of awareness of one’s self, one's problems, or one's effect on others.

Depression: Although sometimes loosely used to refer to depressed mood, the specific psychiatric syndrome of depression is based on additional considerations such as self-esteem, sleep, appetite, or participation in therapy.

Developmental Sequence: The normal progression of activities during human development; for example the progression from rolling, to crawling, to walking.

Diffuse Axonal Injury: Widespread microscopic injury to nerve connections (axons) along with injury to specific brain structures, including the upper brain stem.

Diplopia: Double vision.

Dysarthria: Weakness, slowness, decreased range and/or uncoordinated muscles of the mouth, throat, and lungs resulting in problems with clarity of speech.

Dysphagia: Difficulty in swallowing.

Electroencephalography (EEG): A method of testing that records the electrical activity in the brain (brain waves). This diagnostic tool is often used if a patient has had seizures or to assess passive seizure risk, even if no seizures have occurred.

Embolus: A blood clot that forms in one blood vessel and travels to another. Blood clots can often form in the heart and later travel to the arteries in the brain, blocking smaller vessels and causing a stroke.

Epidural Hematoma: A blood clot outside the brain and its lining membrane, the dura; problems are usually the result of compression of the underlying brain, especially the brain stem.

Functional: Sufficiently useful for independent use in daily activities.

Foley: A urinary catheter which allows urine to drain from the bladder into an exterior collecting device.

Gastrostomy: A tube that leads from the exterior of the body directly to the stomach, allowing nutritional formulas and fluids to be administered.

Glasgow Coma Scale: A scale used to measure coma based on numerical scores for eye opening, speech, and limb movements or postures.

Hematoma: A blood clot.

Hemianopia/Hemianopsia: Partial blindness in which the left or right visual field is "blacked out" in both eyes.

Hemiparesis: A weakness on one side of the body.

Hemiplegia: A paralysis or complete inability to move one side of the body as a result of injury or damage to the brain.

Hemorrhage: Internal or external bleeding.

Heterotopic Ossification: Inflammation and deposition of calcium along areas within muscle tissue.

Hydrocephalus: Enlargement of the ventricles (cavities) of the brain that normally contain cerebrospinal fluid; a neuro-surgically placed shunt tube can drain fluid from the ventricles to the abdomen.

Incontinence: The inability, due to physical and/or cognitive reasons, to control urination or bowel movements.

Intracerebral Hemorrhage: Bleeding inside the brain, caused when a diseased blood vessel bursts and floods surrounding brain tissue with blood.

Ischemia: Local interruption of blood supply to tissue.

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI): An imaging procedure that uses a large magnetic field to provide information about damage to the brain tissue.

Metabolic: Pertaining to the body's systems of chemical reactions for tissue production, maintenance or energy use.

Muscle Tone: Degree of tension in a muscle.

Neuropsychology: A branch of psychology concerned with understanding how brain dysfunction affects cognitive, emotional, and behavioral performances of an individual. Neuropsychologists use standardized testing procedures to assess an individual's performance and to make recommendations regarding cognition.

Patient Care Conference: A meeting of the treatment team led by the team physician; treating staff discuss a patient's progress, problems, therapy goals and plans, and discharge planning issues.

Perseveration: The continued repetition of a word or phrase.

Physiatrist: A physician with special training in rehabilitation medicine and the prescription of therapy services.

Post Traumatic Amnesia: That period of time after head injury when a person does not reliably recall ongoing day-to-day events.

Rancho Scale: A scale of stages of recovery after traumatic brain injury.

Retrograde Amnesia: The period of time before injury that the patient does not recall; this period usually shrinks as patients improve.

Seizure: A convulsion; clinical seizures can range from generalized shaking with loss of consciousness to episodic strange feelings or sensations; the basis of a seizure is an abnormal electrical discharge in the brain; seizures are generally not damaging to the brain unless they are prolonged.

Serial Casting: The use of plaster casting on specific joints (i.e., elbow, ankle) to increase range of motion.

Shearing Injury: Damage to the brain caused by areas of brain tissue moving in the same direction at different speeds, resulting in diffuse brain damage.

Short-Term Memory: The ability to learn new information.

Spatial-Perceptual Deficits: The inability to judge distance, size, position, rate of movement, form, and how parts relate to wholes.

Spasticity: Exaggerated response of muscles causing stiff and awkward movements and abnormally increased muscle tone; this can be caused by injury to the brain.

Splints: The use of plastic supports to position specific body points, most commonly the wrists and hands.

Subdural Hematoma: A blood clot that forms between the dura and the skull; clots fill up the space under the skull and exert pressure on the brain.

Team Conference: A meeting led by the team physician and case managers; treating staff discuss a patient's progress, problems, therapy goals and plans, and discharge planning issues.

Tracheostomy: A tube that goes from the exterior of the throat into the windpipe thus allowing for an adequate exchange of air.

Tracking: Visual following of an object or sound with the eyes.

Transient Ischemic Attack (TIA): A temporary lack of blood to an area of the brain, followed by an improvement in circulation before permanent damage can occur. A TIA is often an early warning sign of stroke.

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