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Complications
By Mayo Clinic staffDepending on how long the brain suffers a lack of blood flow, a stroke can sometimes cause temporary or permanent disabilities. Stroke complications differ depending what part of the brain was affected and may include:
- Paralysis or loss of muscle movement. Sometimes, a lack of blood flow to the brain can cause a person to become paralyzed on one side of the body, or lose control of certain muscles, such as those on one side of the face. With physical therapy, you may see improvement in muscle movement or paralysis.
- Difficulty talking or swallowing. A stroke may cause a person to have less control over the way the muscles in the mouth move, making it difficult to talk, swallow or eat. A person may also have difficulty speaking because a stroke has caused aphasia, a condition in which a person has difficulty expressing thoughts through language. Therapy with a speech and language pathologist may improve this disability.
- Memory loss or troubles with understanding. It's common that people who suffer strokes have some memory loss. Others may develop difficulty understanding concepts. This complication may improve with rehabilitation therapies.
- Pain. Some people who have a stroke may have pain, numbness, or other strange sensations in parts of their body affected by stroke. For example, if a stroke causes you to lose feeling in your left arm, you may have an uncomfortable tingling sensation in that arm. You may also be sensitive to temperature changes, especially extreme cold. This is called central stroke pain or central pain syndrome (CPS). This complication may improve with time, but because the pain is caused by a problem in the brain instead of a physical injury, there are few medications to treat CPS.
People who have a stroke may also become withdrawn and less social. They may lose the ability to care for themselves and may need a caretaker to help them with their grooming needs and daily chores after a stroke.
As with any brain injury, the success of treating these complications will vary from person to person.
