The Northwick Park Examination of Cognition: A brief cognitive assessment tool for use in acute stroke services

Background/Aims: Assessment of cognitive impairment following stroke forms an important part of diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation planning. However, none of the available and widely used tools were developed specifically for use in stroke services. Most screening tools were developed for dementia, and consequently are biased toward an evaluation of memory function, provide inadequate assessment of executive function and are mainly verbally administered, limiting their utility in aphasic patients. Methods: One hundred and sixty-six stroke patients admitted to a hyper acute stroke unit and a control sample of 100 healthy participants completed the Northwick Park Examination of Cognition (NPEC). The NPEC includes 22 sub-tests in the domains of reasoning, episodic memory, language, perception and attention/executive function. Multiple input (verbal, visual) and output (spoken, written, gesture) modalities increase accessibility to patients with various deficits/lesion locations. Findings: Mean time from...