What do the researchers hope to do?
The researchers will study various tests and assess if they are accurate; suitable for busy stroke units and acceptable to patients. This will help give definitive recommendations on the tests best suited to stroke units.
We know very little about how mood, memory and thinking change after stroke. The researchers will follow stroke survivors over 18 months testing mood, memory and thinking regularly, and looking for patterns and predictors of recovery. They have access to increasingly sophisticated brain scans that may give us information about future risks. They will assess the added value of these new technologies for predicting and understanding emotional, memory and thinking problems. They suspect that early recognition of issues may identify people who need support or specialist treatment.
However, indiscriminate testing may also have unintended harmful effects. Some people with important problems may be missed and others may be wrongly diagnosed with cognitive problems and treated inappropriately. They want to talk to people who have experienced stroke and learn about their experiences of being tested and treated for emotional, memory and thinking problems.
This research will improve how we look for and look after emotional, thinking and memory problems - helping clinical teams give the best care to individual patients; assisting policy makers in planning future stroke services and helping researchers plan future studies of treatments.
Why is this research needed?
Problems of mood, thinking and memory are common after a stroke. There has been limited research around these issues. This work aims to answer fundamental questions around who develops these problems and how they recover. The first step towards managing problems is recognition.
Guidelines recommend assessing for emotional, thinking and memory problems in the first days following a stroke. However, there is no consensus on how to do this. At present, researchers and clinicians are using a variety of different assessments.
We will study various tests and assess if they are accurate; suitable for busy stroke units and acceptable to patients. This will allow us to give definitive recommendations on the tests best suited to stroke units.
We know very little about how mood, memory and thinking change after stroke. We will follow stroke survivors over 18 months testing mood, memory and thinking regularly, and looking for patterns and predictors of recovery. We have access to increasingly sophisticated brain scans that may give us information about future risks. We will assess the added value of these new technologies for predicting and understanding emotional, memory and thinking problems. We suspect that early recognition of issues may identify people who need support or specialist treatment.
However, indiscriminate testing may also have unintended harmful effects. Some people with important problems may be missed and others may be wrongly diagnosed with cognitive problems and treated inappropriately. We want to talk to people who have experienced stroke and learn about their experiences of being tested and treated for emotional, memory and thinking problems.
Our research will improve how we look for and look after emotional, thinking and memory problems - helping clinical teams give the best care to individual patients; assisting policy makers in planning future stroke services and helping researchers plan future studies of treatments.
Joint Stroke Association/Chief Scientist Office Senior Clinical Lectureship Award (Scotland). This type of award is for candidates who are still spending up to 50% of their time in clinical practice.