An International and Multidisciplinary Consensus on the Labeling of Spatial Neglect Using a Modified Delphi Method

Survivors of neurological injury (most commonly stroke or traumatic brain injury), frequently experience a disorder in which contralesionally positioned objects, or the contralesional features of individual objects, are often left unattended or underappreciated. The disorder is known by more than 200 unique labels in the literature, which potentially causes confusion for patients and their families, complicates literature searches for researchers and clinicians, and promotes a fractionated conceptualization of the disorder. The objective of this Delphi was to determine if consensus (≥75% agreement) could be reached by an international and multidisciplinary panel of researchers and clinicians with expertise on the topic.

To accomplish this aim, we used a modified Delphi method in which 66 researchers and/or clinicians with expertise on the topic completed at least one of four iterative rounds of surveys. Per the Delphi method, panelists were provided with results from each round prior to responding to the survey in the subsequent round with the explicit intention of achieving consensus. The panel ultimately reached consensus that the disorder should be consistently labeled spatial neglect. Based on the consensus reached by our expert panel, we recommend that researchers and clinicians use the label spatial neglect when describing the disorder in general and more specific labels pertaining to subtypes of the disorder when appropriate.