Speech recovery after stroke variable

This is according to a study published recently in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry. Ronald Lazar and colleagues looked at 22 of 91 patients who had language disorders after suffering a stroke.

They found that neither lesion size, age or education were related to the severity of the initial language disorder, or to language ability 90 days after the stroke. Patients with severe deficits at baseline in individual language domains could recover, improve to a less severe deficit or not improve at all.

There was significant variability in language recovery after first-time stroke, even in more severe, initial syndromes. Traditional predictors of post-stroke language outcomes did not reliably predict function at 90 days. These data suggest that other factors that account for functional stroke recovery have not yet been identified.

Most patients who have suffered aphasia and related language disorders after stroke recover at least some degree of function. Although long-term follow-up has shown recovery after many years, the greatest degree of spontaneous recovery appears to occur within the first 3 months after a stroke. Among the factors purported to determine language recovery after stroke, initial syndrome severity and lesion size have been reported to be important predictors