How the Speech and Facial Palsy Recovery After Stroke Study (SAYS) is aiming to help people with stroke recover speech and face weakness.

The SAYS study has recruited 200 stroke survivors from all around Greater Manchester to understand how people recover their speech and face weakness after stroke.

Speech sounding slurred or unclear after stroke means people lose confidence; they can become socially isolated and unable to return to work. When speech is affected, people after stroke are also likely to have a face weakness. This is when the face does not move the same on both sides.

This can have a devastating impact on the individual’s psychological wellbeing, as well as causing discomfort and problems when eating and drinking.

Why funding is needed

Having £15,000 would allow us to employ a statistician for two days a week for six months. This would greatly enhance our exploration of the data that our stroke survivors are generously allowing us to record.

This information will give us more knowledge to share with stroke survivors, their families, clinicians and guide our future treatment research.

How our research could help stroke survivors

We are assessing people over time, at 6 and 16 months post-stroke, to explore recovery and understand the impact of these difficulties on their everyday lives.

We have a large amount of data and would now like to recruit additional statistical support to help us analyse and make sense of this data to an even greater level of detail.