S  B  P  S

 

Scottish Bell's Palsy Study

Welcome

How to Refer a Patient

What is Bell’s Palsy?

What is the S B P S?

Who’s Who

The Trial Sites

The Patient’s Experience

Graeme’s Story

House-Brackmann Scale

The Questionnaires

Documentation

Legal Stuff

Links to other web sites

The Patient’s Experience

When the doctor telephoned the HSRU computer in Aberdeen at the time of your hospital visit in order to be told what treatment to offer to you, a number of other events were set in train behind the scenes. The Aberdeen computer sent an automatic email to the study Coordinator in Dundee, including an electronic recording of your personal details (name, address and contact telephone number) as reported by the doctor during his telephone call. This despatch was immediate. When the message was picked up by the coordinator in Tayside, he will either have contacted you himself (if you are in the area covered by Tayside and Fife) or else contacted one of three other research associates with a request to do the same. Here they all are:

Arranging the baseline assessment visit

What will happen to you, once you are enrolled into the study

The recording will probably sound something like this

HSRU stands for Health Services Research Unit

Our role then is to arrange a first meeting with you to take place within the next few days. The reason for this is that at this and at subsequent assessments we will be grading the seriousness of your attack, and therefore we will need as accurate a picture as we can get of how things were at the start. It will be convenient if this visit (and the two subsequent visits) can take place in your home, but this doesn’t have to happen, and if you prefer to be seen in your GP’s surgery (for instance) or for that matter in the home of a friend or relative, then that can be arranged too, if the distances are not too great.

What happens at the assessment visits

At the first visit we will fill in a form including more detailed information about yourself than there will have been time or the need to supply at your hospital visit; this will only need to be completed once. Then, at this and at all subsequent visits, we will administer three questionnaires. They are all short and extremely easy to complete.

Finally, we will take four portrait photographs of you in specific poses (that is, maintaining specific expressions).

 

Examples of these are shown below: the patient is photographed

 

           (1) at rest
           (2) with raised eyebrows
           (3) with eyes tight shut
           (4) smiling

 

This is in order to follow the progress of your recovery.

 

The photographs will be assessed by a panel of experts and the severity of your condition is graded according to the House-Brackmann grading system which is our preferred measuring instrument.

 

It is likely that this part of the assessment is the one that will be the least comfortable for you. If you prefer, we can get the photographs over with first, and then address the three questionnaires.

Pose 1  at rest

Pose 2  eyebrows raised

Pose 3  eyes tight shut

Pose 4  smiling

Visit 1  In this case, 4 days after onset and 3 days after the commencement of treatment

Visit 2  Three months later

Click here to read a typical account from a BELLS patient, as reported to a BBC Health Correspondent

See also Graeme’s Story

A true story
from
Graeme Garden