Stages of Stroke Recovery

my name is Carol Lauren and I'm a stroke survivor well I was hemiplegic which meant half-paralyzed and so I was confined to a wheelchair because I didn't know what to expect no one could tell me what the prognosis would be and that I would have any recovery so I was very scared one of the number-one concerns the patients have is how much they're going to recover and to predict where they'll end up my name is dr. mark Bailey I'm the medical director of the brain and spinal cord rehabilitation program at uhm Toronto rehab Institute the path of recovery depends on the location and the size of the stroke so for the most part people recover physically over a period of a few months we do know that in the instance of speech that recovery can go on for many years and the same thing with cognition or thinking skills we know that that process can go on for longer but for some processes it's a little slower and some processes it's a little faster we need to better understand as a key question in our research after the first couple months things may slow down a bit and that is in part because the brain has the most ability to change early after a stroke now that doesn't mean that people can't achieve meaningful changes far after stroking and certainly throughout the first year and even afterwards but those changes will happen slower my name is dr. Janice King I'm a professor with the University of British Columbia in the department of physical therapy I also direct the rehabilitation research program at the Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute we actually know that after stroke people do pretty well after the first few months in rehabilitation but they not only tend to stall but many of them actually go backwards so they stopped walking as much they stopped engaging in so many social activities and that in itself can impair the brain my name is dr. Dale Corbett I'm a professor of neurosciences at the University of Ottawa and I'm also the scientific director and CEO of the Canadian partnership for stroke recovery out six months is really what we would consider to be kind of the chronic phase of stroke recovery at that point recovery has really slowed it's kind of stalled if you like you know they can still make functional gains after that but the actual speed of recovery the rate of recovery has dramatically decreased by six months it's important that they do a lot of repetition and practice of things so for example if they have a problem with their upper limb or their hands then they have to be really encouraged to use that upper limb and reaching for objects and doing daily chores around the house and not using the good unimpaired limb too much getting out and reducing stress ensuring that you take your medication are all parts of a healthy lifestyle that include physical activity and are really really important to keep healthy to prevent having another stroke or another cardiovascular event I have the K in partnership stroke recovery we are planning a clinical trial which will examine the role of fluoxetine a serotonin specific reuptake inhibitor in recovery after stroke so in this trial we would have some people just do intensive exercise which we know will actually help these individuals and another group that will do exercise coupled with antidepressants to see if we can get added benefits from the active presence working and interacting with the exercise what I would say to people after they have had a stroke and they have hid what they perceive as a slower time is that it is really important to keep going and particularly with activities that involve physical activities activities that involve social activities on a lifelong basis so plateau for me became a positive word it meant that it was a time to look at things and change it over and usually when I did that progress started up again it's a long journey of ups and downs but along the way there's a lot of successes and those successes are measured in small increments

Channel: Canadian Partnership for Stroke Recovery

Views: 175,833

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Id: zzRNUhf1u_E

Length: 5min 52sec (352 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 08 2016