Acquired brain injury includes traumatic brain injury (TBI) from falls, road traffic collisions, assaults and sport; subarachnoid haemorrhage from ruptured aneurysms; hypoxic-ischaemic injury after cardiac arrest, drowning or overdose; brain tumour surgery; and infections such as encephalitis and meningitis. Stroke is often described as an ABI too, and shares much of the same rehabilitation pathway.
Everyone who experiences an ABI adjusts from a known baseline. Family and friends remember the person as they were before, and part of good rehabilitation is holding space for that grief while building the new practical routines that recovery needs.
ABI is not the same as a congenital or developmental brain condition such as cerebral palsy, autism or an inherited neurological disorder. Those conditions are present from birth or early childhood and follow their own therapy and support pathways, usually within paediatric and lifelong disability services rather than adult neurorehabilitation.
Consequences of ABI can include physical change (weakness, balance, fatigue), cognitive change (attention, memory, executive function), communication change, and change in mood, behaviour and awareness. A specialist multidisciplinary team assesses all of these together and builds one coherent plan.