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The CAT is a unique clinical assessment for people with aphasia, combining assessment of language, cognitive skills and consideration of the wider effects of aphasia on people's lives. On publication, it filled a gap in provision, providing a short but comprehensive assessment based on current theoretical understanding. It is now widely used by Speech and Language Therapists nationally and internationally, directing further assessment and informing diagnosis and treatment and therefore of benefit to people with aphasia. It has become the assessment of choice within clinical trials and projects investigating the relationship between language difficulties and lesion sites.
Ensuring that a new medicine improves or maintains a person's quality of life is important. Abbott's longstanding collaborative relationship with health professionals and service users has enabled the development of two patient-reported, quality of life instruments (CFQoL, LupusQoL). Abbott's expertise has contributed to the development of policy/guidelines concerning quality of life measurement in clinical trials for the European Medicines Agency and European Cystic Fibrosis Society. The instruments have been adopted internationally with the LupusQoL providing a global business opportunity for a US translation company. At the request of pharmaceutical companies, the LupusQoL is translated into the numerous languages required for use in their multi-national clinical trials of new medicines.
We have demonstrated clinical improvement of aphasic patients' language abilities within only two weeks of commencing Intensive Language Action Therapy (ILAT). In the majority of patients language improvement is more significant than that achieved with conventional aphasia therapy. This clinical improvement is accompanied by brain reorganisation as indicated by electroencephalography. ILAT positively impacts on quality of life for post-stroke patients, through rapid enhancement of communication and other language skills, and on clinical management of those patients, through reduced strain on resources, including time and financial cost.
Acute stroke services in the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust have been reorganised using research on modelling stroke patient pathways through hospital, social and community services carried out in CSRI at Ulster. By suitably administering thrombolysis (clot-busting drugs), a stroke patient's time in hospital, community rehabilitation and nursing homes can be reduced, so that although the treatment costs money up front, it saves in the long-term and also improves quality-of- life. The work has contributed to changing stroke patient policy in the Belfast Trust as well as enhancing patient quality-of-life. It is applicable throughout the UK and beyond.
Forster, House and Young have played a leading role in establishing the importance of long-term psychological and social distress after stroke, shifting the clinical emphasis (and evidence base) in stroke care from a limited focus on physical recovery to acceptance of the importance of psychological and social factors. Evidence we have generated has informed the stroke care pathway in national and international clinical guidelines that influence stroke service delivery, by providing guidance to clinical teams on psychological treatments after stroke and information provision. In tandem we have developed the methodology of stroke rehabilitation research, involving clinical staff in delivery of multi-site studies and thereby enhancing evidenced-based stroke care.