Influence of specific stroke diagnosis on prognostication, recovery, and early management.

Strokes are focal lesions in the brain and as such bring about deficits and portend a course of recovery depending on the nature of the lesion. Given the large number of possible combinations of locations, sizes, and types of lesions, a clear and reliable formula for predicting outcomes based on these characteristics has been statistically difficult, particularly early in the course of recovery. Severity of deficit and age of the patient accounts for sufficient variability that the influence of other factors becomes statistically harder to illustrate.