To investigate the therapeutic effect of neurologic music therapy (NMT) and speech language therapy (SLT) through improvement of the aphasia quotient (AQ) in post-stroke aphasic patients.
Twenty-one post-stroke, nonfluent aphasia patients who had ischemic/hemorrhagic stroke on radiologic evaluation were divided into the NMT and SLT groups. They received NMT and SLT for 1 month. Language function was assessed by Korean version-Western Aphasia Battery before and after therapy. NMT consisted of therapeutic singing and melodic intonation therapy, and SLT consisted of language-oriented therapy.
Significant improvements were revealed in AQ, repetition, and naming after therapy in the NMT group and improvements in repetition in the SLT group of chronic stroke patients (p<0.05). There were significant improvements in language ability in the NMT group of subacute stroke patients. However, there was no significant improvement in the SLT group of subacute stroke patients.
We concluded that the two therapies are effective treatments in the chronic stage of stroke and NMT is effective in subacute post-stroke aphasic patients.
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To determine factors associated with good responses to speech therapy combined with transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) in aphasic patients after stroke.
The language function was evaluated using Korean version of Western aphasia battery (K-WAB) before and after speech therapy with tDCS in 37 stroke patients. Patients received speech therapy for 30 minutes over 2 to 3 weeks (10 sessions) while the cathodal tDCS was performed to the Brodmann area 45 with 1 mA for 20 minutes. We compared the improvement of aphasia quotient % (AQ%) between two evaluation times according to age, sex, days after onset, stroke type, aphasia type, brain lesion confirmed by magnetic resonance image and initial severity of aphasia. The factors related with good responses were also checked.
AQ% improved from pre- to post-therapy (14.94±6.73%, p<0.001). AQ% improvement was greater in patients with less severe, fluent type of aphasia who received treatment before 30 days since stroke was developed (p<0.05). The adjusted logistic regression model revealed that patients with hemorrhagic stroke were more likely to achieve good responses (odds ratio=4.897, p<0.05) relative to infarction. Initial severity over 10% in AQ% was also found to be significantly associated with good improvement (odds ratio=8.618, p<0.05).
Speech therapy with tDCS was established as a treatment tool for aphasic patients after stroke. Lower initial severity was associated with good responses.
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Objective: The purposes of this study were to identify the incidence of subcortical aphasia and to investigate the different linguistic characteristics and prognosis.
Method: Twenty-nine stroke patients(18 men and 11 women) with aphasia were investigated in the study. On the basis of the findings of brain CT and MRI images, the patients were divided into either cortical aphasia group or subcortical aphasia group. Fifteen cortical aphasia patients and 14 subcortical aphasia patients underwent an aphasia screening test. Fluency, comprehension, speech, naming, repetition, reading, and writing abilities were evaluated as the modalities of language. All patients received the speech therapy and were reevaluated at three months after the initial evaluation.
Results: The incidence of subcortical aphasia was 48.3% of all aphasia patients from the stroke. Subcortical aphasia patients showed more variable types of aphasia and less linguistic damage than the cortical aphasia patients. The prognosis of subcortical aphasia patients was better than the cortical aphasia patients. Especially the cases of global aphasia from the subcortical lesions showed a rapid recovery and good prognosis.
Conclusion: Early recognition of the subcortical aphasia and a comprehensive speech therapy would be beneficial for the improvement of linguistic function in the subcortical aphasia patients.
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