Health: Stroke Care

Lord Lingfield Excerpts

Monday 30th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lingfield]

I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler, for securing this important debate. I declare an interest as chairman of the ARNI Trust, which deals with rehabilitation after stroke. The noble Baroness has reminded us that stroke is now ranked as the largest single cause of disability among adults in the United Kingdom. About a third of a million people are now living with moderate to severe consequential problems, and in the brief time allowed I want to touch on one new initiative concerning them.

I was privileged early last year to visit a community centre serving a wide area. Inevitably, among those who come every day just to chat, dine or use its amenities were a considerable number of stroke survivors. I was there to open a unique new stroke facility, which has been pioneering a novel approach developed by the ARNI Trust, and this is the use of fitness trainers. I have to say that hitherto I had thought of fitness trainers as well-muscled young men and women hired at some expense to put city executives through their paces. However, these were rather different. Each had undergone a rigorous course in teaching exercises suitable for stroke victims. They are not physicians or physiotherapists, of course, and the techniques that they teach are simple but innovative ones which relate to the daily life-needs of their patients. I shall give an example.

Many stroke survivors will tell you that they dread falling over because getting up unaided is usually impossible. At home, they often ring the emergency services to assist them, the alternative being possibly to lie on the floor for many hours until a carer arrives. The staff of the centre that I mentioned spend many thousands each year on hiring professional paramedics to turn out when a stroke victim has fallen over while there. This is a legal requirement. In the new facility, the fitness trainers teach a novel and safe technique, currently the subject of a clinical study by a group from the University of Exeter and Plymouth University. It is called IGO—“I get off the floor”. Patients who have learnt it can get up unaided. It has been so successful that the centre now saves some £8,000 each year in paramedic costs, and the disabled people whom I interviewed are delighted with the new-found independence that such techniques can bring.

These trained fitness professionals are now teaching these techniques throughout the country, often in the homes of the stroke disabled, for there is evidence—and the noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler, touched on this—that some stroke victims can continue to make improvements long after conventional wisdom suggests. I have met many who have been able, after training in these techniques, to discard walking aids, and one has been mobilised out of his wheelchair.

Finally, evidence suggests that quite properly the vast majority of funding available for stroke nationally is directed towards the acute phases. In my view, a small funding adjustment towards long-term needs would lead to a greater emphasis on functional exercise after stroke.