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Susan Baker

Publications and source records attributed to Susan Baker.

4 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2003

Utility of the neurologic intensive care evaluation (NICE) in detecting neurologic deficit after cardiac operations--a pilot study.

BACKGROUND: Neurocognitive changes are common after cardiac operations. The acute post-operative period is a critical time when significant neurologic changes may be detected and appropriate therapy initiated promptly. Formal neuropsychologic testing in this situation however is impractical so other means of early detection are required. The goal of this preliminary study was to determine whether simple, standardized, serial nursing neurologic evaluations using the Neurologic Intensive Care Evaluation (NICE) could be helpful in screening patients for neurologic injury in the immediate post-operative period. MATERIAL/METHODS: Details of the intra-operative and post-operative anesthetic management were obtained during report and nurses subsequently scored acute post-operative patients in the CTSICU using the NICE every half hour for the first five hours. Finally, a chart review was performed to determine the neurologic outcome of the patients. RESULTS: The time to achieve the lower NICE scores which reflect mainly brainstem function was the same whereas the time to achieve NICE scores>4 was prolonged in patients with neurocognitive dysfunction. The effect of intra-operative factors on the times to achieve NICE scores was different for the higher and lower scores. The times to reach NICE scores correlated with outcome variables including the time in ICU and time of intubation. CONCLUSIONS: Standardized, serial nursing neurologic assessments of post-operative cardiac patients may be a useful tool for early identification of patients with neurologic injury. They may also provide useful information complementing the data obtained from detailed neuropsychologic testing on the neurologic effects of cardiac operations.

Adult↗
PubMed2002

Stimulus modality and verbal learning performance in normal aging.

The present study investigated the effects of modality presentation on the verbal learning performance of 26 older adults and 26 younger cohorts. A multitrial free-recall paradigm was implemented incorporating three modalities: Auditory, Visual, and simultaneous Auditory plus Visual. Older subjects learned fewer words than younger subjects but their rate of learning was similar to that of the younger group. The visual presentation of objects (with or without the simultaneous auditory presentation of names) resulted in better learning, recall, and retrieval of information than the auditory presentation alone.

Adult↗