Use of an app as a complementary strategy to speech-language therapy in a case of cognitive-communication disorder

Abstract

With the aging of the population, there is an increase in the incidence of common diseases to this age group, such as dementias. Efforts to improve the quality of health care for these patients, including speech-language therapy, have grown. This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness and applicability of the Talk Around It as a complementary strategy in the language therapy of a patient with cognitive communication disorder. The participant was evaluated before and after speech therapy through standardized language assessment protocols. The main focus of therapy was the reduction of anomies. The Talk Around It application has been selected as a complementary therapeutic resource to achieve this goal. In the post-therapy evaluation improvement or maintenance of the Montreal-Toulouse Battery for Language Assessment-Brazil Battery subtests scores was observed: Oral naming (nouns, verbs and total), Semantic and Orthographic verbal fluency and Oral narrative discourse (information unit and scenes). Functional assessment of communicative skills has not changed consistently after the intervention. The technological resource used with conventional therapeutic strategies, during three months, led to improvements in the lexical access ability in the case studied. It use in clinical practice in patients with mild dementia has proved possible.