Background/Aims: The Young Stroke Service (YSS) was established to improve patients’ access to appropriate services. It is a pilot program supporting Victorians and South Australians. Referrals are made to existing outpatient or YSS services– particularly vocational rehabilitation, neuropsychological assessment and treatment. This paper describes unmet needs and presenting features of Victorian YSS patients.
Methods: Intake measures include self-rating of recovery, Young Stroke Screening Tool, EQ5D-3L, PHQ-9, GAD-7 and Oxford Cognitive Screen (Australian).
Results: 68 patients registered (median age 44, female 48.5%, median 200 days since stroke (IQR 86 to 384 days)) between 15/3/23-4/6/24. Eleven patients had unknown stroke onset date. Top 3 unmet needs were return to work/study, memory/thinking, and fatigue. On self-report scales, difficulties were reported in memory/ thinking (74%), talking (48%), writing or reading (35%), and 68% wished to work more hours. 71% reported moderate to severe fatigue. Quality of life (EQ5D) was low with challenges in usual activities (75%), pain/discomfort (59%), anxiety/depression (54%), mobility (49%), self-care (26%). PHQ-9 indicated 42% had moderate to severe depression and GAD-7 indicated 33% had moderate to severe anxiety. Cognition screening noted impairment in 16 people (36.4%) in memory, attention, language, and/or writing numbers.
Conclusion: Findings confirm a high degree of unmet needs relating to vocational rehabilitation, memory/thinking and fatigue, low quality of life and high degrees of anxiety and depression. Cognitive screening only detected half of patients’ subjective cognitive concerns, highlighting the need for more comprehensive assessments. Services offered by YSS address many problems raised by young stroke survivors.