What is Aphasia?
Aphasia is a speech disorder caused by lesions in the parts of the brain that control language. It can create problems in reading, writing and/or speaking. There are four types:
- Expressive aphasia: the patient knows what to say but presents difficulties when writing or saying it.
- Receptive aphasia: the patient can read a printout or listen but cannot make sense of it.
- Anomic aphasia: the patient has difficulties in using words correctly, describing objects, places, etc.
- Global aphasia: the patient cannot understand what is said, speak, read or write.
Prognosis of the disease
The evolution of this disease is difficult to predict as it has a wide range of variability. Generally, young patients tend to have a better recovery. The location of the lesion is also important in diagnosing how the disease progresses. It should be noted that patients usually recover comprehension skills before expression skills.
This pathology is common in adults who have suffered a stroke.
Symptoms of Aphasia
Symptoms directly affect speech producing a language disorder. Patients begin to be unable to construct grammatical sentences so they use short phrases of one or three words to communicate. In addition, word order does not follow grammatical order but is based on the importance of the topic. Other symptoms that may occur are:
- Speaking in sentences that do not make sense.
- Speaking in unrecognizable words
- Not understanding other people’s conversation
- Interpreting figurative language literally
- Writing sentences that do not make sense
Medical tests for aphasia
The physician will perform a physical and neurological examination, assessing stamina, sensation and reflexes. If the doctor notices anything out of the ordinary, he or she may recommend an imaging test such as an MRI to study the causes of aphasia.
It is also possible to undergo informal testing to assess everyday language skills, such as naming common objects, participating in conversation, understanding and using words correctly, repeating words and phrases, reading and writing etc.
What are the causes of Aphasia?
This pathology is common in adults who have suffered a stroke, patients with brain tumors, infections, brain injuries or dementia. Depending on the part of the brain damaged and the magnitude, the severity of the damage can be assessed. Another cause may be a stroke, where recovery may take up to 2 years, although not all patients recover. Another cause may be a loss of brain function, in which case aphasia does not improve.
Can it be prevented?
For prevention it is important to pay attention to the causes that could provoke this disease, i.e. to avoid brain damage by maintaining optimal blood glucose cholesterol levels and avoiding excessive smoking and overweight.
Treatments for aphasia
There are cases in which patients recover from aphasia without treatment, however, most of them need immediate speech therapy. Rehabilitation has to be carried out by a speech specialist through exercises in which patients read, write, repeat what they hear, etc. In addition, exercises can now be performed with additional tools such as online exercises, etc.
Which specialist treats it?
The expert who treats this pathology is the speech-language pathologist, a specialist in language disorders who is in charge of detecting, evaluating, diagnosing and treating language-related disorders.