Aim: To study the early effect of stroke unit(SU). Methods: Three hundred and ninety-two patients with stroke, who were admitted from December 2001 to January 2003 were involved in the study. All these patients were distributed into SU or general ward(GW) randomly to receive treatments. The main observation indexes were Barthel index(BI), national institutes of health stroke scale(NIHSS), oxford handicap scale(OHS). All these data were analysed by SPSS 10.0 software to study the effect of stroke unit. Results: The mean BI gap score between the day of admission and that of discharge was 20.00 ± 24.36 in SU group and 10.63 ± 23.59 in GW group, which had extremely significant difference(t = 3.866, P = 0.000); the mean NIHSS gap score was -2.01 ± 6.61 in SU group and 0.55 ± 7.44 in GW group, which had extremely significant difference(t = 3.598, P =0.000); The mean OHS gap score was -0.74 ± 1.04 in SU group and -0.28 ± 0.98 in GW group, which also had extremely significant difference(t = -4.441, P =0.000). The ratio of rehabilitation increased (P =0.000), while the complications reduced obviously(P =0.000). Conclusion: Compared with GW, patients in SU are able to improve the early daily activities significantly, reduce neurological defects and restore social abilities.