Assessing the Impact of Stroke on Cognitive Abilities
Predicts and measures recovery in stroke patients Allows targeted therapy by identifying patientΓÇÖs problems Provides a method of assessing effectiveness of treatments
The Birmingham University Cognitive Screen (BUCS) can be administered at the bedside and gives a broad set of measures covering several areas of cognition (language, memory, attention, action, numbers). The tests have been specifically designed to be accessible to those who have lost speech and show spatial neglect. There are currently no routine cognitive screens available to healthcare professionals to asses the cognitive ability of acute stroke patients. The ΓÇÿmini-mental state testΓÇÖ is sometimes used but this provides only rudimentary data. The advantage of BUCS is that it can enable doctors and health professionals to target therapy at a patientΓÇÖs problems from the overall profile of their cognitive abilities. BUCS has been standardised in 100 controls and 350 acute stroke patients across 6 centres in the West Midlands. It has also been validated against other standardised tests for each cognitive sub-domain. Data will also be collected over the next 12 months to determine if BUCS changes outcome. There has already been interest to take the screen nationwide and the potential to have it incorporated into standardised assessments given to stroke patients by the NHS. BUCS also has the potential to be developed for other brain injured patient eg AlzheimerΓÇÖs disease and to be present on a variety of media.
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