Perfusion Cognitive Assessment Battery: Evaluating the Cognitive Performance to Improve the Practice

Introduction

Despite the decrease on the incidence of side effects related to the cardiac surgery, the alterations on cognition are frequently experienced by many patients postoperatively. The ethiology of this impact is multiple and there is not described any specific assessment tool in this regard for spanish population.

Objective

To purpose the Perfusionist Cognitive Assessment Battery (P-CAB) as a new tool to audit the postoperative cognitive performance and improve the cardiac surgery outcomes.

Design and Setting

A narrative review and a focal group methodology was applied in a miltidisciplinary enviroment (surgeons, neurologist, neuropsichologist, nurses, mathemathic and perfusionist) to determine the tests, the timing and the workflow to be applied in the study. The P-CAB was composed by the Phototest, the Clock Drawing test and the Visuospatial Memory test, performed preoperatively, in a short-term and during the mid-term recovery

Results

The P-CAB was achievable with the multidisciplinary cooperation on 116 patients with a remarkable acceptance from the patients.

Discussion

Its application permits to detect a cognitive decline and even subtler changes related to functions like the episodic, semantic and visuospatial memory, the language, attentional processes and executive functions. 

Conclusion

P-CAB represents a valuable multidisciplinary assessment tool that offers valuable information about the neurocognitive performance after the cardiac surgery.