Age and Functional Outcome After Stroke

Abstract
The effect of age on functional outcome after stroke remains uncertain. Many studies have found that younger patients do better than older patients, whereas others have found minimal or no effect of age on rehabilitation outcomes. We examined the effect of advancing age on FIM™ gain, length of stay, length of stay efficiency, and home discharge in 979 stroke rehabilitation patients at a long-term acute care rehabilitation hospital. We found a strong relationship of increasing age to poorer outcome in all measures for patients with admission FIM (AFIM) score 80.