STROKE IMPACT ON THE COGNITIVE FUNCTIONS OF MOROCCAN NEURO-LESIONED PATIENTS IN THE GHARB REGION

Abstract

Stroke (ischemic and hemorrhagic stroke) is a sudden-onset neurological deficit resulting from focal vascular lesions. This is due to a clot-induced obstruction of a vessel (ischemic stroke) or a rupture of a vessel causing haemorrhage (hemorrhagic stroke). The management of neuro-injured patients (AVC) is a major public health problem. The principal aim of this study is to evaluate the short and long term neuropsychological sequences following a neurological accident of neuro-injured patients hospitalized at the Kenitra Provincial Center (Morocco) in comparison with the control group. We tested 34 stroke patients, with an average age sample of 59.12 years, for a standard deviation of 14.35 with extremes between 32 and 82 years. Of these patients, 20 were female (58.82%) and 14 male (41.18%). The sex ratio is 0.7 in favour of the female sex. Both the neuro-lesioned patients and the control group benefited from neuropsychological tests. In the neurocognitive evaluation we used three neuropsychological tests: (a) The bell test or non-verbal bell dam test allows for a selective, visuospatial and strategic attentional evaluation; (b) Raven's test focuses on the nonverbal neuropsychological intelligence where the subject is led to analyze and solve each test problem based on inductive reasoning; (c) The digit memory test is a test to evaluate the short-term verbal memory and working memory capabilities of stroke patients. Our results showed through the various neurocognitive tests that our stroke patients obtained lowers score, compared to the control group (p <0.05). Raven Standard Progress Matrix Test Scores (SPMR):(Mean-Patients = 32.49, SD = 7.43 < Mean-Controls = 42.01, SD = 3.98). Digit Memory Test scores: Forward digit span (Mean-Patients = 2.21, SD = 0.5 <Mean-Controls = 2.65, SD = 0.49). Backward digit span (Mean-Patients = 1.74; SD = 0.6 <Mean-Controls = 2.41, SD = 0.5). Bell test (Mean-Patients = 24.35; SD = 2.62 < Mean-Controls = 30.18; SD= 2.52). The patient quality of life is consequently highly affected. Rehabilitation was effective and is very important because it improves cognitive functions such as nonverbal skills, visuospatial and strategic attention, along with the digit memory equally improving patient quality of life.