Table 5.

Long-term consequences of strokes in young adults.

Consequence	Description
Physical
Functional disability	•Main determinant of independence or the need for care-givers, 20–30% reported moderate to severe functional impairment [86].
Pain Syndromes	•Includes headache, central post stroke pain (CPSP), complex regional pain syndrome, and pain associated with spasticity and shoulder subluxation. •Data is scarce on the prevalence, especially among the young and for each subtype. CPSP is reported to be present in 6% of young adults with stroke [87,88]. •Headache is reported in 15%–20% [86]
Epilepsy	•Prevalence is up to 12% of young adults [89].
Psychosocial
Cognitive impairment	•Present in up to 40% of young adults on long term follow up [90]
Depression	•Between 17 and 29% of young stroke patients develop depressive symptoms [91,92] •Associated with poor functional outcome and increased risk of suicide [93]
Anxiety	•Between 19 and 23% of young stroke patients develop anxiety [91,92]
Fatigue	•41% of young adults with stroke experienced symptoms of fatigue, compared to 18% in controls. •Is associated with a poor functional outcome [94]
Sexual Dysfunction	•One study reported that up to one third of young stroke patients develop sexual dysfunction, however, it is believed that depression and the use of ACE inhibitors confounds to it [95].
Return to work	•Between 50% and 70% of young adults with stroke return to work, 25% of whom need adjustments to previous duties. •On average, it takes 8 months for patients to return to work [86] •20% of the patients who had returned to work at 1 year were not working at 5 years after ischemic stroke •Hemorrhagic strokes, large anterior strokes, strokes caused by large artery atherosclerosis, and cardioembolism pose higher risk for not to return to work [96].