Deans' stroke musings: Validation of the longer-term unmet needs after stroke (LUNS) monitoring tool: a multicentre study

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.

Sunday, September 3, 2017

Validation of the longer-term unmet needs after stroke (LUNS) monitoring tool: a multicentre study

These long term needs would be non-existant if you got survivors 100% recovered. Solve the original problem and these secondary problems will cease to exist.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23787941

LoTS care LUNS study team¹.

Collaborators (13)

Author information

Abstract

OBJECTIVE:

To evaluate the acceptability, test-retest reliability and validity of the Longer-term Unmet Needs after Stroke monitoring tool.

DESIGN:

A questionnaire pack was posted to stroke survivors living at home three or six months after stroke. A second pack was sent two weeks after receipt of the completed first pack.

SETTING:

Stroke survivors living at home across England.

SUBJECTS:

Stroke survivors were recruited from 40 hospitals across England, in two phases. The first with an optimal cohort of patients, the second to capture a broader post-stroke population, including those with communication and/or cognitive difficulties. Patients were excluded if they required palliative care or if permanent discharge to a nursing or residential home was planned.

MAIN MEASURES:

The questionnaire pack included the Longer-term Unmet Needs after Stroke tool, General Health Questionnaire-12, Frenchay Activities Index, and Short Form-12.

RESULTS:

Interim analysis of phase 1 data (n = 350) indicated that the tool was sufficiently robust to progress to phase 2 (n = 500). Results are reported on the combined study population. Of 850 patients recruited, 199 (23%) had communication and/or cognitive difficulties. The median age was 73 years (range 28-98). Questionnaire pack return rate was 69%. For the new tool, there was 3.5% missing data and test-retest reliability was moderate to good (percentage item agreement 78-99%, kappa statistic 0.45-0.67). Identification of an unmet need was consistently associated with poorer outcomes on concurrent measures.

CONCLUSIONS:

The Longer-term Unmet Needs after Stroke tool is acceptable, reliable, can be self-completed, and used to identify longer-term unmet needs after stroke.