Description Module
The Description Module contains narrative descriptions of the clinical trial, including a brief summary and detailed description. These descriptions provide important information about the study's purpose, methodology, and key details in language accessible to both researchers and the general public.
Description Module path is as follows:
Study -> Protocol Section -> Description Module
Description Module
Ignite Creation Date:
2025-12-25 @ 2:44 AM
Ignite Modification Date:
2025-12-25 @ 2:44 AM
NCT ID:
NCT02288533
Brief Summary:
Chronic consciousness disorders have high level of impact on public health and its costs.
Detailed Description:
Consciousness disorders have high impact on society and national health system. One of these disorders is vegetative condition in which, as in coma, there isn't any self or environmental consciousness but there is alertness, whereas in minimal state of consciousness at least part of awareness is conserved.
In Emilia Romagna region about 80 people per million of inhabitants are hospitalized after cerebral damage, and after discharge about 1/5 of patients are stabilized in a consciousness disorder.
The diagnosis of these disorders is based on neurobehavioural tests, for example JFK Coma Recovery Scale Revised (CRS-R).
In these patients recovery of state of consciousness is one of the main challenges. There are very little evidences about treatment, it has been proposed the use of therapies that could modulate central nervous system activity, like specific drugs, neuroimaging and neuromodulation techniques such as transcranial magnetic stimulation and repetitive transcranial current stimulation.
A non invasive neuromodulation technique is transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) which can modulate cortical excitability: cathodic current reduces excitability whereas anodic current increases it.
In conclusion, tDCS is an easy technique to use, it's not invasive and it's an efficient tool for the modulation of cortical excitability that demonstrated reliable results in healthy subjects.
As the tDCS can modulate cortical excitability it is likely that the combination of this stimulation tool with transcranial magnetic stimulation for the registration of cortical excitability could give important information about cerebral damage in patients with consciousness disorders and to test new treatments. It is also likely that the modification of cortical excitability could induce neurobehavioural changes.
Study:
NCT02288533
Study Brief:
Protocol Section:
NCT02288533