NIH Stroke Scale app for iPhone and iPad
The National Institute of Health Stroke Scale is now commonly used by neurologists, emergency room physicians, nurses, and other medical personnel to quickly and accurately grade the severity of stroke signs. It is especially useful for evaluating acute strokes being considered for intravenous thrombolysis or other acute interventional therapies.
The NIH Stroke Scale application was developed to assist medical personnel to quickly and easily perform this test without having to search for testing materials or manually having to add up the subtest scores. The interface is intuitive. Touching a scoring button adds to the current score. Touching the instructions button provides instructions for each subtest to explain details of testing. Changing between subtests in either direction is done either by scrolling or by using the Page Control. Full screen pictures are included for use in testing language. Tapping on a picture will make any following picture display. The final page shows a summary of the test results.
Pros and cons of NIH Stroke Scale app for iPhone and iPad
NIH Stroke Scale app good for
Im a neurology resident and really like the application. The interface is very intuitive and easy to use. I will certainly use it when evaluating patients.
This is a nice quick way of going through the NIHSS. I used it on a couple of patients in the ED recently. I wish it had a way of storing and timing the scores for patients, but its just outside of the scope of what this tool attempts to do. One can refer very easily to the instructions and keep track of ones running score. I dont see a quick way of clearing and starting over short of closing and re-opening the application. This tool is better than the NIH Stroke Scale calculator which is part of Pepids medical calculator function. Epocrates calculator doesnt even include an NIHSS calculator.
Overall, very good. Well worth the $3.
Excellant, excellant program! I use it nearly daily.
Internist in rural hospital in Georgia.
( The Stroke Belt )
The NIH Stroke Scale is fairly detailed (not relative to a Neurologists full exam, but for an ED Physician it is much more detailed than our more cursory/usual Neuro screening exams) and can be a pretty time intensive test to administer in a busy Emergency Department.
This is a nice simple application that helps you go through the NIHSS efficiently. The interface is clean and allows you to get straight to scoring the particular sub test, detailed instructions for each sub test are available on each screen. The standardized Pictures, Sentences and Word stimuli are also built right in. You can navigate backwards and forwards from sub test to sub test with a finger swipe, there is a running Stroke Score total at the bottom of each screen and a summary screen at the end showing all Subtests and Scores for each.
This should greatly reduce the time it takes to administer the NIHSS and help with record keeping in the setting of a busy Emergency Department.
No practice vedios or link for certification. That would be a nice add on or new app. I would also like definitions of terms. It is a great app thanks.
Gret program! Would like to see auto "clear" to clear the scores after an exam with just one button. Otherwise, nice program!
Some bad moments
I work as a nurse at a primary stroke center. The NIH Stroke Scale is a great time saving tool to quickly assess patents. It is east to use and step by step instructions are provided.
Get Neuro toolkit instead as it includes this and many more scales: GCS, etc for same price.
Great app till iOS 8. App crashes with iOS 9! Please fix it...
My favorite NIHSS app now just crashes when you try to open it.
Heres my prior 5 star review:
Having one less thing to carry in my pocket is great. I really like the detailed instruction it has-- its hard to remember how to score unusual situations like hx of amputations, etc. Theres also tPA criteria in this app. It even has the 4.5 hr exclusions listed. The only thing I wish it had is an ABCD2 calculator and a quicker way to reach the item you need to score (instead of having to scroll through the whole thing). One really nice feature is that you dont need to score an item before moving to the next section.
I loved this app but now it crashes my phone. I use this app at work.
