2017 Using NIHSS and Spoken Picture Description Subscale of the Modified Comprehensive Aphasia Test for Prediction of Characteristics of Acute Ischemic Stroke

Abstract

SUMMARY T he National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) has been validated in the 1990s as the most appropriate tool in assessment patients of acute stroke. However, it was found to be biased towards the left hemispheric and motoric functions providing minimal assessment to the language, right hemispheric and cognitive functions. The need to complement the role of the NIHSS is necessary to aid in an accurate and as rapid as possible assessment for patients with acute ischemic strokes in order to provide the appropriate way of management. We hypothesized that combining the NIHSS with a quantitative analysis of a picture description task as used in the Spoken Picture Description subscale of the Comprehensive Aphasia Test could provide valuable information about prediction of site, size and side of acute ischemic stroke. We examined 86 patients with acute ischemic stroke from the ASUSH and Al-demerdash hospitals with the NIHSS and SPD-CAT within 48 hours of occurrence of stroke and finding the correlation between their