External head injury vs. stroke

A work colleague suffered head trauma when he fell down his basement steps and hit his head on a wooden bench at the foot of the stairs. He was unconscious in the hospital for almost a week but has been slowly progressing and was recently moved to a rehab facility.

I was talking to a friend about our colleague, and he said compared the injured guy’s condition right now to that of another work colleage who suffered a stroke at age 41 or 2. Speech difficult to understand not just because of screwed-up motor control but aphasia as well, for example.

The whole conversation prompted me to wonder how much difference there is physiologically and in terms of prognosis between someone who had an external injury vs. someone who had a stroke?

“Stroke” is almost as all-encompassing a term as “cancer.” Strokes can occur in numerous different portions of the brain, be mild or severe, affect physical or mental capabilities or both, be on one side or the other of the body or both, and a thousand other variables.

Same with head trauma.

Sorry, but this is a giant “it depends” question.