How To Recognize Stroke – Symptoms And Signs

Every stroke manifests differently, and its symptoms depend on the area of the brain that is affected and its size. The symptoms and signs usually appear suddenly and can be noticed at the very first moment they occur.

In some patients the symptoms can appear while they are sleeping, and the patient notices these signs in the morning.

The sudden and rapid occurrence of the symptoms is the most recognized sign of a stroke, and if the symptoms develop slowly and gradually worsen over several days, weeks or months, then most probably it is not a stroke.

The most common symptoms of stroke are:

– Muscle weakness or paralysis – it can affect different body parts, but most often its the same side of the face, arm, leg ( hemiparesis ). The weakness of the right side of the body occurs due to impaired function of the left side of the brain and vice versa.

– Loss of sensibility – stroke can cause reduction of the sensibility in certain body parts. Most often it causes numbness of face, arm and leg on the same side of the body ( hemianaesthesia ).

– Speech disorders -stroke can cause difficulties in speaking as a result of the weakness and loss of coordination of the face, mouth and throat muscles.

This results in a bad articulated speech ( dysarthria ). Another type of speech disorder is dysphasia, which manifested through the inability to understand other’s speech or inability to find words and non-fluent speaking, difficulties in reading ( dyspexia ) or writing ( dysgraphia ).

Dysphasia (speech disorder) occurs due to dysfunction of the dominant hemisphere. The left hemisphere is dominant in almost every right-handed person. The right side of the brain is dominant in about half of the left-handed individuals, and for the other half the left hemisphere is still dominant.