The study, funded by the National Institute for Health and Care research (NIHR), and led by researchers at the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences was published in the Lancet Health Longevity.
Many people experience changes in thinking after stroke. This can include difficulties with memory, attention, language, planning, or decision-making. For some, these problems improve over time. For others, they can last much longer and affect day-to-day life, work, relationships, and independence.
There is no single typical recovery pattern for cognition after stroke and families have reported feeling unprepared for these “invisible” effects when someone leaves hospital.
If clinicians can make an earlier and more informed estimate of who is more likely to have longer-term thinking problems, this could help plan more effective support for patients and families.
A team led by Professor Nele Demeyere have created a prediction tool that uses information already collected during a typical hospital stay, including age, gender, severity of the stroke. alongside results from the Oxford Cognitive Screen (OCS), a short bedside test of thinking skills carried out soon after the stroke and now widely used across the NHS.