Conclusion
hemodynamic orthostatic problems, RTT
Four weeks of RTT treatment to achieve head-up verticalization were not more effective in promoting recovery of consciousness in DoC patients than CPT. Correlation analysis implies that total therapy time with head-up tilt—irrespective of the method used—is associated with improved LoC. CPT seemed more feasible to achieve head-up tilt than RTT, as there were no interruptions during the intervention and the highest number of verticalization therapy sessions in the CPT group. However, the net therapy time that could be used to verticalize the patient was significantly longer in the RTT groups compared to CPT. Taken together, this small exploratory RCT does not support the hypothesis, that RTT therapy is necessary to promote recovery of consciousness. Though this was not a limiting factor in our study, RTT-based verticalization may be a method to provide therapy to DoC patients with severe hemodynamic orthostatic problems with high efficiency due to longer daily verticalization times compared to standard treatment.T. M. Raiser and A. Bender have contributed equally to this work.