Functional Abilities of an International Post-Stroke Population: Standard Assessment of Global Everyday Activities (SAGEA) Scale

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Function is an important outcome after stroke; traditional assessments may not capture functional deficits important to patients. We examined the validity of the Standard Assessment of Global Everyday Activities (SAGEA), a patient-reported outcome that assesses activities important to patients and for use in international clinical trials. METHODS: The NAVIGATE-ESUS trial evaluated rivaroxaban compared to aspirin in preventing recurrent stroke in 7213 participants. The Modified Rankin Scale (mRS), the National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS), and the SAGEA were collected at entry. Chi square tests were used to compare proportions and Spearman rank correlations were used to compare between measures. SAGEA was compared to the Modified Frailty Index (MFI) and the occurrence of infarct to examine criterion validity RESULTS: Participants were 67 years, 2/3 were male, and at baseline 30% had no disability and 58% had slight disability according to mRS scores. SAGEA was weakly correlated with the mRS (r=0.37), the NIHSS (r=0.29) and the MFI (r=0.30). Of the 2154 with an mRS score of 0, 61% reported difficulty on the SAGEA. The largest discrepancies between SAGEA and other measures were because of cognitive functional deficits detected by the SAGEA that were not identified on other assessments. A larger number of MRI identified infarcts (acute and covert) were associated with a higher SAGEA score (p=0.007). CONCLUSIONS: The SAGEA is a simple, globally applicable measure of cognitive and functional abilities that identifies issues that other commonly used assessments of disability and function do not capture.