The recovery pattern in treated aphasic patients (2) —particularly cases in which a plateau of improvement was reached—

Abstract

A retrospective investigation was made into the recovery course of the language impairement of 111 post-stroke aphasic patients who all reached a plateau of improvement through language therapy at the Speech Clinic of the Tokyo Metropolitan Geriatric Hospital between 1972 and 1983. The type of aphasia as well as the recovery rate were determined using the Test for Diffential Diagnosis of Aphasia (The Roken Test). The results were as follows: (1) The period when a plateau of improvement was reached after language therapy began, level of the final outcome, and the correlation between the initial severity of the language deficit and the final outcome, were different depending on the clinical type of aphasia. (2) In general, the degree of improvement was much smaller in the aged aphasic patients than in the adult ones. (3) A close relationship between the age and the recovery pattern of patients was found in some aphasic types but not in other types. (4) The degree of improvement was the greatest in cases where language therapy had begun early in the post-onset period. On the other hand, neither the period when a plateau of improvement was attained nor the final outcome were related to the time when language therapy began. (5) No relationship between sex and recovery pattern was found. © 1984, IEEE. All rights reserved.