If you've had a stroke, you and your family will probably be anxious about the future. You may wonder whether you'll have another stroke, whether you'll be able to live your life as you did before, or if you'll need help because you have a disability. You may also want to know whether having a stroke will affect how long you can expect to live.

It's very difficult to say what will happen to you after a stroke. A lot depends on the type of stroke you've had and how bad it was, as well as your age, whether this is your first stroke and what your risk factors are. To learn more, see Risk factors for a strokes.

Some people who survive a stroke have few, if any, after-effects. Others need full-time care.

Strokes are the leading cause of serious long-term disability in the UK. But it's also true that the brain has a remarkable ability to recover from injury. Other parts of your brain may take over the job of cells that have been damaged by a stroke, so it's difficult to say whether the problems you have in the first few days after a stroke will still be there a few months later.

Research gives us some idea of what you can expect after a stroke, but even this can become out-of-date as doctors learn more about the best way to treat strokes and how to stop them happening again.

No research statistics can tell you what will happen to you. They can only tell you what happened to the group of people who were studied at one particular time.

This is what the research shows us:^{[4][39][7][40][13]}

• The time it takes to recover from a stroke depends on how bad it is

• One-half to two-thirds of all people who have had a stroke are able to live at home three months later

• Between 15 in 100 and 30 in 100 people who survive a stroke are permanently disabled

• About 1 in 5 people who have a stroke need to be cared for in a nursing home

• Half the men and women who've a stroke under the age of 65 die within eight years

• About 1 in 6 people who've had a stroke have another one within a year

• The amount of disability you have is likely to increase with another stroke

• Of the people who are still alive 30 days after a stroke, about 1 in 3 will be completely independent within three weeks. At six months half the people who've had a stroke can live independently.

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