Hello,
I'm very sorry to hear about your friend's
stroke.
Here is some information relation to hemorrhagic strokes (brain bleeds).
First of all, brain bleeds can happen for different reasons such as a
head injury (traumatic), a rupture of an
aneurysm and bleed within the brain matter itself (parenchymal hemorrhage).
It is very important in your friends case to determine what caused his bleed. Given his fevers any infections need to be ruled out and an
echocardiogram (
ultrasound of the heart) should be done to rule out any sort of infection of the heart valves which could send bacteria to the brain which could result in a bleed. He absolutely needs to have blood vessel imaging in the form of either a CT angiogram and MR angiogram to make sure that there are no abnormal collections of blood vessels in the brain and aneurysms that could have cause the bleed. Also when there is a bleed in the brain a tumor must also be ruled out.
All that being said, the most common cause of a bleed in the brain is due to
high blood pressure which causes weakening of blood vessels and can result in a hemorrhage.
Most commonly management of brain hemorrhages is supportive, meaning that the only things that are done is blood pressure control, pain management and if the person is unconscious then support for breathing. If the bleed is very large then surgical intervention may be necessary.
What the doctors are saying as that they want to repeat a
CT scan to see if the bleed has become larger, which can sometimes happen. There are several different risk factors for the bleed worseing: one is poor blood pressure control, another is if there is an underlying aneurysm or blood vessel that could bleed. That's why it is so important to determine what caused the bleed.
For small bleeds with no underlying vascular or malignant pathology the outcome is typically fairly good. The blood causes irritation and pressure on the surrounding brain causing weakness and neurological symptoms, but as the blood subsides the symptoms improve and sometimes there may be a remarkable improvement. The language area of the brain is very delicate and it is hard to predict how well he will recovers, but my best educated guess is that he will recover at least some language function and could even recover close to how he was though probably never quite back to level his language was before the bleed.
It sounds like he is doing relatively well overall since he is able to go to the restroom without support, so that is an encouraging sign.
Hope I have answered your query. Let me know if I can assist you further.
Regards,
Dr. Janne Kristoffer Nissinen, Neurologist