Assessment of Functioning and disability after ischemic stroke

Functioning and disability after ischemic stroke are clinically meaningful and of major relevance to patients. Despite many instruments available to assess these outcomes, little is known about their interrelation and predictive factors. We prospectively identified 4264 patients with acute ischemic stroke from 30 hospitals in Germany during a 1-year period between 1998 and 1999 and registered them in a common data bank. The patients were centrally followed up via telephone interview after 100 days and 1 year to assess various scales such as the Barthel Index (BI), modified Rankin Scale (MRS), extended Barthel Index (EBI), Short Form-36 Physical Functioning (SF-36 PF), and Center for Epidemiologic Studies-Depression short form (CES-D). Outcome status could be assessed in 67.2% of patients 100 days after hospital admission. Of these, 13.9% had died, 53.7% had regained functional independence (BI