Background and purpose: The neuropsychological profile of young stroke patients is a relatively underinvestigated subject. As the etiology, risk factors, stroke subtypes, and stroke severity seem to differ in the young from those of an older age group, the neuropsychological defects also may have their own age-related differences.

Methods: We used data of 1008 consecutive patients aged between 18 to 49 years with first-ever ischemic stroke enrolled into Helsinki Young Stroke Registry, 1994 to 2007. We analyzed the data of 525 patients that were tested bywho underwent a brief a neuropsychological examinationst during the first 3 months post-stroke. The testing was brief in nature concentrateding on certain neuropsychological disorders and did not include comprehensive evaluation of all cognitive fields. The neuropsychological test results were categorized and valued numerically.

Results: In our patients, verbal (31.8%) and visual memory (29.4%) and were the most commonly impaired fields according to brief neuropsychological evaluation reports, whereas orientation (1.0%), amnestic (1.0%) and agnostic (1.9%) disorders occurred most rarely. Most severe impairments were detected in the field of verbal memory (6.7%). Regarding demographic differences, men had more visual memory disorder (32.5% vs. 24.4%) and women more depression (22.8% vs. 7.1%). Patients aged 40-49 years had more visual memory disorder (33.3%) than patients aged 15-39 years (22.1%).

Conclusions: Our finding that verbal memory is susceptible to impairments is in line with previous studies around the subject. In addition, we found that visual memory is a relatively common neuropsychological field to impair in young patients after ischemic stroke. Our survey did not include evaluation of executive functions, problem solving or significant aphasia, which has to be taken account of when regarding the results.