NCT02019615

tDCS in MCS: Repeated Stimulations

Repeated tDCS in Chronic Minimally Conscious State Patients : a Sham-controlled Randomized Double Blind Study

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 20 (actual)
• Sponsor: University of Liege · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 15 Years – 75 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

In this study researchers will apply transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) for 5 consecutive days in chronic patients in minimally conscious state (MCS). 2 sessions of 5 days of stimulation will be realized, one anodal and one sham. After each stimulation, behavioral improvement will be assessed with the Coma Recovery Scale Revised (CRS-R). A final assessment will be done one week after the end of the sessions to assess the long term effect of the tDCS.

Detailed description

Positive effects of tDCS in patients in MCS was showed in a recent study published in Neurology. But the effects went down after 1 or 2 hours. To increase the lasting of the effects, a new study will evaluate the effects of tDCS on the left prefrontal dorsolateral cortex for 5 consecutive days in chronic patients in MCS. 2 sessions of 5 days of stimulation will be realized, one session will be real (anodal stimulation) and one placebo (sham stimulation). After each stimulation, behavioral improvement will be assessed with the Coma Recovery Scale Revised (CRS-R). A final assessment will be done one week after the end of the sessions to assess the long term effect of the tDCS. Researchers expected to see an improvement of the CRS-r total score at the end of the anodal session and that this improvement persists for a week.

Conditions

• Patients in Minimally Conscious State After a Severe Brain Injury (e.g., Anoxia, Traumatic Brain Injury, Stroke)

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
DEVICE	transcranial direct current stimulation	anodal transcranial direct current stimulation on the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex for the anodal session and sham stimulation (5secondes of tDCS) for the sham session

Timeline

• Start date: 2013-02-01
• Primary completion: 2014-09-01
• Completion: 2014-09-01
• First posted: 2013-12-24
• Last updated: 2017-03-31

Locations

1 site across 1 country: Belgium