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Language training helps stroke patients speak
Last Updated: 2005-07-22 15:46:39 -0400 (Reuters Health)
By Will Boggs, MD
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - People who've experienced a stroke can lose
the ability to use or understand speech, a problem known as aphasia.
Now, new research suggests that a short-term type of intense language
training called constraint-induced aphasia therapy (CIAT) can improve
language function in these patients.
"Following a stroke and especially in the chronic stage of disease the
best thing you can do is to enforce an intensive training," Dr. Marcus
Meinzer, from the University of Konstanz, Germany, told Reuters Health.
As reported in the medical journal Stroke, Meinzer and colleagues
investigated the impact of CIAT, which includes intensive training,
increasing level of language task difficulty, and limitation of
nonverbal communication strategies, and CIATplus, which adds written
materials and photographs of everyday situations, on language functions
in 27 patients with aphasia.
Significant improvements in a standardized language test were seen after
CIAT and CIATplus, the authors report, and the improvements persisted
throughout 6 months of follow-up. Overall, 85 percent of patients showed
some degree of improvement.
After training was completed, the researchers note, only relatives of
patients trained by CIATplus reported further improvements in the
quality of everyday communication. Relatives of patients in the CIATplus
group also reported an increase in the quality of their comprehension.
"The present study replicated the results of a pilot study in which
language functions were shown to improve within a very short period of
time even in the chronic stage of aphasia after CIAT," the investigators
conclude. "Most interestingly, the improvements were equally found among
patients (regardless) of age, severity, and duration of aphasia."
To increase their chances of success with these training programs,
patients should "work on their deficits as hard as possible," and be
aware "that progress might be slow, but small steps are the necessary
prerequisite of further improvements," Meinzer noted.
SOURCE: Stroke, July 2005.
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