Objective: To present patients with stuttering speech in association with stroke.
Design: Case series with follow-up for 5 years, or until the stuttering resolved.
Setting: University and community hospital neurology wards, and ambulatory neurology clinics.
Patients: Four patients who developed stuttering speech in association with an acute ischemic stroke. A 68-year-old man acutely developed stuttering with a large left middle cerebral artery distribution stroke. A 59-year-old man who had stuttered as a child began to stutter 2 months after a left temporal lobe infarction, as nonfluent aphasia was improving. Another childhood stutterer, a 59-year-old originally left-handed man developed severe but transient stuttering with a right parietal infarction. A 55-year-old man with a left occipital infarction had a right hemianopia and an acquired stutter, for which he was anosognosic.
Conclusion: The clinical presentation of stroke-associated stuttering is variable, as are the locations of the implicated infarctions.