Stroke recovery today is a shitshow! Nobody knows one damn thing about 100% recovery!
What Stroke Recovery Looks Like Today
You may be familiar with the common signs and symptoms of a stroke: loss of vision, drooping face, weak limbs, and slurred speech. But what happens during the recovery phase, once a patient has spent time in the hospital and their brain has begun to recover?
Lester Leung, a vascular neurologist at Tufts Medical Center and associate professor at Tufts University School of Medicine, Gabriele Moriello, a physical therapist and associate professor in the Department of Rehabilitation Sciences at the School of Medicine, and David Thaler, a vascular neurologist at Tufts Medical Center and professor at the School of Medicine, recently shared how stroke patients recover and what factors may help or hinder the process.
The Shape of Recovery
There are two main categories of strokes: ischemic strokes and hemorrhagic strokes. Most strokes, about 87%, are ischemic strokes, caused by the blockage of a blood vessel in the brain. Hemorrhagic strokes, about 13% of strokes, are caused by bleeding in the brain.
Both types of strokes can damage healthy brain tissue. But the two types have slightly different trajectories of recovery. A patient with an ischemic stroke will see their brain function and mobility drop down after a stroke, then begin to improve starting as soon as 24 hours after their stroke.
A person with a hemorrhagic stroke also loses brain function quickly after a stroke. But because there is blood in the brain, hindering its function, it takes longer for that person’s function to return. As blood reabsorbs into the brain, “there’s a very steep potential incline in terms of regaining function, but it’s delayed,” Leung said.
For both ischemic and hemorrhagic strokes, the potential for improvement is high, Thaler said. The “shape” of recovery is also similar: People improve quickly early on, then their progress begins to slow. And while the severity of a stroke doesn’t typically change the shape of recovery, it does affect the extent to which a person will ultimately improve, he said—a person with a mild stroke may regain all their functions, while someone with a severe stroke, such as one that paralyzed them, may not ever recover completely.
“Recovery is different for every single person,” Moriello said.(What a fucking excuse for not knowing how to get survivors recovered! I'd have you fired for that defeatist attitude!)
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