407 – Cognitive Rehab Belongs in Acute Care: How One Hospital Built the Case Over 12 Years

On this episode of The Swallow Your Pride Podcast, Theresa sits down with Nicole Langton-Frost, CCC-SLP, BCS-S and Carey DeWalt, CCC-SLP from The Johns Hopkins Hospital to talk about something a lot of acute care SLPs have been told to skip: cognitive evaluation and treatment in the ICU. This conversation started because MedSLP Ed posted a question about whether cognitive rehab really has a place in acute care, and Nicole reached out to say her team wanted to weigh in.

Nicole Langton-Frost CCC-SLP, BCS-S and Carey DeWalt CCC-SLP walk through the research on multimodal sensory stimulation for patients with disorders of consciousness, the 2013 New England Journal of Medicine study showing 40% of ICU survivors still had cognitive function equivalent to a moderate TBI at three months, and a 2023 randomized controlled trial where just two 30-minute cognitive sessions a week produced significantly better cognitive scores. They also get specific about chart review: what head imaging tells you about cerebral small vessel disease and Fazekas scores, which lab values should make you postpone a standardized assessment, and how ejection fraction factors into cognitive risk. They cover which patients are and are not good candidates, why the answer is often compensatory strategies and caregiver training instead of restorative therapy, and how their department grew this practice one patient population at a time.

Get the show notes and references here: https://syppodcast.com/407

The post 407 – Cognitive Rehab Belongs in Acute Care: How One Hospital Built the Case Over 12 Years appeared first on Swallow Your Pride Podcast.