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Rehabilitation After Stroke: What Can Be Done?

Summary & Participants

A stroke can induce a wide variety of disabilities. With timely and proper rehabilitation, however, patients can often learn how to regain functioning and resume their lives. Physical, occupational and speech therapists can all work with a patient to help them recover abilities that have been lost or damaged.

Medically Reviewed On: May 09, 2008

Webcast Transcript

ANNOUNCER: A stroke is always devastating but it is not necessarily fatal.

THOMAS KWIATKOWSKI, MD: About half of all patients who have a stroke will have a moderate to severe stroke that will leave them with permanent symptoms that will affect their life. About another 25% will have very mild symptoms that will allow them to live a relatively normal life. And about 20 to 30% of patients will die from their stroke at one year.

ANNOUNCER: The road back to a normal life can be difficult and takes work, but it can be done.

THOMAS KWIATKOWSKI, MD: Even patients who have moderate to severe symptoms can benefit from rehab, and that is something that we recommend for all patients who can cooperate with rehab, that often can improve the disability that your stroke has caused, so that then you can learn to perform many of the activities that you did prior to having your stroke.

ANNOUNCER: While recovery may take a long time, it's important to get started as soon as possible.

ROSE GONZAGA-CAMFIELD, RN: We try to have the team of other disciplines involved, like physical therapy and occupational therapy, as early as less than 72 hours.

THOMAS KWIATKOWSKI, MD: That is continued, depending upon on the severity of the patient symptoms, up to several weeks. And if you have a moderate to severe stroke, you would typically go to an inpatient rehab facility, where you would have several hours a day of intensive rehab.

If your stroke is more mild, you might be discharged from the hospital and then, as an outpatient, go to a rehab center.

If you have a paralyzed limb; if you don't start doing rehab early on, you will develop what we call contractures, where your muscles become very tight and then it becomes very difficult to get them to be loose again and able to be moved.

So we really want to start rehab early enough so that you don't develop contractures, that you don't develop other complications of your stroke, such as bed sores or severe infections due to lack of activity.

ANNOUNCER: Since stroke can affect any one of a number of functions including movement, speech and comprehension, it's necessary to have a team of experts work with patients.

THOMAS KWIATKOWSKI, MD: If a patient has a very severe motor weakness or a weakness in their limbs, we can offer them physical therapy that will them improve the tone of the muscles that have been affected. It may even help them regain some of the strength that was lost as part of the stroke.

If someone has difficulty with speech following a stroke, they often will benefit from speech therapy where we can help them learn to speak again. And this is a process that takes a long period of time but still can result in significant improvement in patients who have had a significant impairment of their speech as part of their stroke.

ANNOUNCER: Often remaining disabilities need to be addressed by finding ways around the problem.

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