Deans' stroke musings: Cognitive Stimulation for Portuguese Older Adults With Cognitive Impairment

Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.

What this blog is for:

My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.

Thursday, September 11, 2014

Cognitive Stimulation for Portuguese Older Adults With Cognitive Impairment

There has to be something useful in here for your doctor to give you if you are cognitively impaired post-stroke.
http://aja.sagepub.com/content/29/6/503?etoc

A Randomized Controlled Trial of Efficacy, Comparative Duration, Feasibility, and Experiential Relevance

¹Neuropsychophysiology Lab, CIPsi, School of Psychology, University of Minho, Braga, Portugal
²Justice and Violence Applied Research Unit, CIPsi, School of Psychology, University of Minho, Braga, Portugal
³Department of Counseling and Applied Educational Psychology, Bouvé College of Health Sciences, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA

Jorge Alves, MSc, Laboratório de Neuropsicofisiologia, Escola de Psicologia, Universidade do Minho, Campus de Gualtar 4710-057, Braga, Portugal. Email: jorge.alves@psi.uminho.pt

Abstract

Although some studies point to cognitive stimulation as a beneficial therapy for older adults with cognitive impairments, this area of research and practice is still lacking dissemination and is underrepresented in many countries. Moreover, the comparative effects of different intervention durations remain to be established and, besides cognitive effects, pragmatic parameters, such as cost-effectiveness and experiential relevance to participants, are seldom explored. In this work, we present a randomized controlled wait-list trial evaluating 2 different intervention durations (standard = 17 vs brief = 11 sessions) of a cognitive stimulation program developed for older adults with cognitive impairments with or without dementia. 20 participants were randomly assigned to the standard duration intervention program (17 sessions, 1.5 months) or to a wait-list group. At postintervention of the standard intervention group, the wait-list group crossed over to receive the brief intervention program (11 sessions, 1 month). Changes in neuropsychological, functionality, quality of life, and caregiver outcomes were evaluated. Experience during intervention and costs and feasibility were also evaluated. The current cognitive stimulation programs (ie, standard and brief) showed high values of experiential relevance for both intervention durations. High adherence, completion rates, and reasonable costs were found for both formats. Further studies are needed to definitively establish the potential efficacy, optimal duration, cost-effectiveness, and experiential relevance for participants of cognitive intervention approaches.