Telerehabilitation in Poststroke Anomia

Abstract

Anomia, a word-finding difficulty, is a frequent consequence of poststroke linguistic disturbance, associated with fluent and nonfluent aphasia that needs long-term specific and intensive speech rehabilitation. The present study explored the feasibility of telerehabilitation as compared to a conventional face-to-face treatment of naming, in patients with poststroke anomia. Five aphasic chronic patients participated in this study characterized by: strictly controlled crossover design; well-balanced lists of words in picture-naming tasks where progressive phonological cues were provided; same kind of the treatment in the two ways of administration. ANOVA was used to compare naming accuracy in the two types of treatment, at three time points: baseline, after treatment, and followup. The results revealed no main effect of treatment type (P = 0.844) indicating that face-to-face and tele-treatment yielded comparable results. Moreover, there was a significant main effect of time (P = 0.0004) due to a better performance immediately after treatment and in the followup when comparing them to baseline. These preliminary results show the feasibility of teletreatment applied to lexical deficits in chronic stroke patients, extending previous work on telerehabilitation and opening new vistas for future studies on teletreatment of language functions.

A comparison of remote therapy, face to face therapy and an attention control intervention for people with aphasia: a quasi-randomised controlled feasibility study

“…[16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23] Two studies compared face to face with remote delivery of aphasia therapy. 16,18 Results showed that treatment gains were either no different across delivery modes 16 or marginally better in the remote condition. 18 Although positive, the evidence base for telerehabilitation in aphasia is very limited.…”

Telerehabilitation of anomia in primary progressive aphasia

“…Following treatment, the participants demonstrated more improvement for trained than for untrained items. In a study involving a crossover design and five participants with chronic aphasia and anomia, Agostini et al (2014) found comparable positive effects of remote and in-person anomia treatment. Similarly, Fridler et al (2012) compared remote and in-person delivery of anomia treatment in a study that involved a crossover design and eight participants with chronic aphasia.…”

“…Recent telerehabilitation studies involving post-stroke aphasia have examined the efficacy of anomia treatment or lexical retrieval treatment (Agostini et al, 2014; Dechene et al, 2011; Fridler et al, 2012; Furnas & Edmonds, 2014). In the first of these studies, Dechene et al conducted a telerehabilitation study involving three participants with anomia.…”

Successful remote delivery of a treatment for phonological alexia via telerehab

“…Those that have done so have largely focused on remediating lexical retrieval deficits (Agostini et al, 2014; Dechêne et al, 2011; Furnas & Edmonds, 2014). For example, Dechêne and colleagues (2011) treated anomia in three post-stroke PWA using a synchronous audio/video connection and tablet PC.…”