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Stroke After-effects

How Stroke May Affect You

Complications of Stroke

What happens to your body after a stroke?

How Stroke May Affect You

Stroke does not affect individuals in a similar way. Thus, a stroke patient may not experience all the consequences of stroke. Here are the different stroke after-effects.

Mobility and Activity of Daily Living
	You may experience weakness on one side of your body or problems with coordination and balance. This may cause you to have difficulty moving around and carrying out daily routines such as feeding, showering, and dressing. Refer to physiotherapy and occupational therapy fact sheets for more information.
Nutrition
	You may have difficulty swallowing and may need to be on a special food consistency or nasogastric tube feeding. Supplements may be prescribed to meet your daily nutritional requirements.
Cognition
	As a result of stroke, you may have poor memory attention or difficulty with thinking and reasoning. These difficulties may affect your ability to perform certain tasks and make decisions.
Continence
	You may experience difficulty controlling your bladder or bowel movements. This may be due to the damage in the area of the brain or reduced in mobility. Refer to continence problems fact sheets for more information.
Emotional Changes and Tiredness
	Feelings of fatigue, anxiety, anger, or depression are common after stroke. These may be normal responses to what has happened. In some cases, they may require specific treatment. Do inform your stroke care team if you are experiencing these symptoms. Refer to psychological effects fact sheets for more information.
Behavioural and Personality
	Stroke may create behavioural and personality changes impacted by the damage to the part of the brain, which regulates emotions, decision making and judgement. Behavioral and personality changes include aggression, apathy, disinhibition, emotional lability, irritability, and impulsivity.
Sexual activity
	You may feel worried about engaging in physical intimacy or have a physical impairment that affects intimacy. Refer Sexual Intimacy fact sheets for more information.
Social
	The consequences of stroke may restrict your ability to engage your usual social activities.

After having a stroke, you may suffer from some complications. Your stroke care team will take action early to try to detect and prevent complications if possible. Here are some examples of common complications.

Contractures

This usually occurs when the limbs become fixed in a certain position due to irreversible contraction and fibrosis of the muscles.

Infection

Swallowing impairment can sometimes result in food or fluids entering the lungs, leading to pneumonia.

Poor hygiene care of the genital area may also cause urinary tract infection.

Pressure Sores

The constant pressure over certain body parts from reduced mobility may cause the skin over that area to break down.

Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT)

Formation of blood clots in veins of the legs may occur because of reduced mobility after stroke.

Muscle Spasticity

Muscle spasticity after stroke may cause your muscles to become tense and contract abnormally, leading to pain.

Seizures