The assessment of fitness to drive after a stroke: the Nordic Stroke Driver Screening Assessment.

The British Stroke Driver Screening Assessment (SDSA) is a set of four simple cognitive tests to evaluate driving fitness in stroke patients. To evaluate its usefulness in a Scandinavian context, we adapted the tests and assessed a group of 97 stroke patients from Sweden and Norway, using a driving test as the criterion. When results were calculated according to the original method, based on a discriminant function, less than 70% of the participants were correctly classified.

Visual and tactile rod bisection in unilateral neglect.

A rod bisection task was performed by 16 RBD patients with visual neglect, 10 RBD and 10 LBD patients without visual neglect, and 10 normal controls. Three different conditions were used: tactile, where they explored the rod blindfolded; visuo-tactile, where they explored the rod manually without blindfold; and visual, where they pointed to the midpoint without prior manual exploration. Only within the RBD group with visual neglect was there a significant difference between the three conditions.

Tactile line-bisection in normal subjects.

The effects of spatial position, handedness, and hand of performance were assessed in 36 normal subjects using a tactile line-bisection task described in 1980 by Bowers and Heilman. An interaction between hand of performance and spatial position indicated that both hemispace and anatomical pathways determine laterality effects. Neither the left-hand superiority nor the leftward error in the midline condition by both hands found in an earlier study could be observed here.

Causes of Dependence in Personal Care Three Years after StrokeA Study in the Home Environment.

Many activities of daily living (ADL) assessment instruments are available for judging the ability to perform personal care in, among others, persons suffering a stroke. However, ADL assessment instruments do not normally treat the underlying causes of failure to perform an activity.Seventeen persons with stroke were videotaped when performing personal care in their home environments about three years after the incident.

A tactile maze test in unilateral spatial neglect: the influence of vision and recording technique.

Right brain-damaged patients with left spatial neglect were examined on a tactile maze task. They started to explore the right side of the maze and their search times were longer on the left side. Their performance was the same whether blindfolded or not, which contrasts with the results of other studies and probably reflects differences in task demand.