The Relationship Between Clinical Test And Behavioral Assessment Of Unilateral Neglect After Stroke

Objective: Unilateral neglect is a common feature after stroke, and usually resultsin poor functional outcome. The clinical tests and behavioral assessments are the main assessment methods for unilateral neglect. However, despite a large amount of research , there is still no consensus regarding the relationship between them. The aim of this study was just to investigate the relationship between clinical tests and behavioral assessment and furtherly, to appraise the sensitivity of the line bisection and cancellation test.Methods: According to the Catherine Bergego Scale(CBS) which assesses thebehavioral unilateral neglect (UN), twenty-four stroke patients were divided into four groups: no UN, mild UN, moderate UN and severe UN. At the same time, twenty-four healthy relatives of patients served as age-matched control group. The subjects were asked to join in the line bisection and cancellation test . In the line bisection test, the subjects were asked to place a short crossmark in the middle point of different length lines which located in different situation of a A4 paper. The proportion of length of the right part after bisection to the whole line was calculated. In the line cancellation test, the subjects were asked to place a short crossmark in the lines which they had seen. The number and distribution of the lines which were ignored by the subjects were calculated. At last, the time of the patients' moving theunaffected hand to both sides was recorded and made comparison with t-test. The SPSS software was used to analyse the acquired statistics. The relationship between the line bisection and cancellation test and CBS was analysed by the Spearman correlation.Result: There exists correlations between the line cancellation test and the CBSscores by analyze. However, the line bisection test was more sensitive for assessing the unilateral neglect, the incidence of which was 62.5% to 25%. It is indifferent between the time of moving the unaffected hand to both sides. In the line bisection test , the crossover effect of space location was found in moderate and severe unilateral neglect groups. And, the crossover effect of line length was found in moderate unilateral neglect. After searching the relationship of the line bisection and the CBS scores, we found that there existed moderate to severe unilateral neglect when a right bias below to 40% arised in the left or middle part of a A4 paper.Conclusion: The study showed there existed relationship between the bisectiontest and the behavioral assessment of unilateral neglect. That is , a right bias below to 40% in the left or middle part of a A4 paper usually suggests moderate to severe unilateral neglect in the daily living.Postgraduate: Meng pingping Directed by Professor Wang Qiang...