Nutech Functional Score: A New Functional Scoring System for Patients With Cerebrovascular Accidents

Abstract

Background: Stroke or cerebrovascular accident happens when a part of the brain gets poor supply of blood that leads to either hemorrhage or blockage due to deoxygenation. To measure stroke outcomes, various stroke scales are invented in the last few decades. The present study has compared a novel stroke scale, Nutech functional score (NFS) to that with the most widely used and globally recognized European stroke scale (ESS).

Methods: NFS has been designed with 22 different parameters taking into consideration its ability to measure neurological as well as functional impairments associated with stroke. Each symptom has been assigned scores (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) that runs in direction from extreme bad (1) to normal (5). The scores are converted to numeric values using an empirical formula. We have compared both the NFS and ESS scores for measuring stroke outcomes.

Results: NFS is able to assess motor, sensory and autonomic parameters for stroke patients. It assesses not only the clinical symptoms but the overall change in quality of life. ESS fails to measure all kinds of functional parameters and it involves tedious calculations.

Conclusion: NFS has proven to be a much simpler and efficient scoring system in comparison with ESS which is a 14-point stroke scale. NFS is a multiple use scale which can measure more parameters than ESS and can be used universally to assess the patients suffering with stroke.




J Neurol Res. 2015;5(4-5):246-251
doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.14740/jnr352w