SLT: A Case Study

Standardization of the revised Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination is based on a normative sample of 242 patients with aphasic symptoms tested at the Boston, VA. Medical Center between1976-1982.

W.C., a 26 year 11 month old woman, was brought to the Florida Atlantic University-Communication Disorders Clinic (FAU-CDC) by her boyfriend for a Speech-Language Evaluation. She was referred to the FAU-CDC by her neurologist for word finding difficulties and a possible articulation disorder after a left hemisphere hemorrhagic stroke one month ago. According to her boyfriend, W.C.’s symptoms began immediately following her stroke and are characterized by word finding difficulties, slowed and choppy speech, and mispronunciation of certain consonants that is affecting intelligibility along with a strained voice.

Language is an ability that many of us take for granted in everyday life. For those with aphasia, it is a daily struggle to overcome and effective communication is a goal to strive for. Aphasia patients are able to think, perhaps as well as the average person, but they simply cannot convey their ideas or thoughts easily. The Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination is an excellent examination for the diagnosis of the presence and type of aphasia, and for the location of brain damage. The Minnesota Test for Differential Diagnosis of Aphasia has been shown to be the most comprehensive assessment of the overall patient’s strengths and weaknesses in regard to language; it also allows for physicians to predict recovery accurately. Though it is no longer as popular or applicable as newer diagnostic tests, such as the BDAE, it is still an accurate assessment for aphasia. I think this is the paradox in neurological assessment: as technological advances improve, older assessments are becoming invalidated- though they are not inaccurate assessments. New advances and knowledge are being acquired in medicine every day, therefore there is always room for improvement (Holland, 2008). One of the biggest cons to the two batteries I mentioned in this paper is the fact that they are both time consuming- for both the patient and the

Aphasia is an acquired neurological disorder results from damage to the brain. Aphasia has different disorders, all which can have varying degrees and impairments. The main areas aphasia affects are spoken expressive language, spoken comprehension of language, written expression, and reading comprehension. Aphasia can be caused by a variety of brain injuries such as brain tumors, surgery, and traumatic brain injury. The most common cause of aphasia however is a stroke, with up to 50% of survivors experiencing some type of aphasia (Maher 2010). With a great number of people who experience aphasia, there is not just one treatment that helps all. Treatment plans for those who have aphasia are individualized to each person based on the specific

In addition the SLP could also, make a small communication book for Chuck to take with him because he usually has the word at the tip of his tongue, but if he looked down at a list of words he could identify that word. It is crucial that this book will be customized for his personal needs and interests (Parker, 2013).

An issue frequently debated by the legislature concerns funding of various social/public programs which include speech-language pathology services. As a child who suffered from an auditory processing disorder, and a future licensed Speech-Language Pathologist (SLP), I know all too well how important SLP services are for children. Currently, funding for social/public programs to include Speech-Language Pathology services in the United States is not adequate for children with learning disabilities and the legislature must act to remedy this.

Clients suffering from stroke have slow speech loss of memory, speechless one side of their body paralysed which cause restriction to their movement.

Sundin, K., Jansson, L., & Norberg, A. (2000). Communicating with people with stroke and aphasia: understanding through sensation without words. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 9(4), 481-488.

Human beings occasionally suffer bad damage to particular parts of their brains. Unfortunately, these injuries may lead to major failure of speech production, understanding language and comprehension which most of the patients suffer it permanently. This impairment is called Aphasia. Gayle (2012) states that people with aphasia fail to understand sentence comprehension although it is a simple sentence. She also mentioned that aphasia patients also have difficulty in reading and understanding speeches. According to Fromkin, Rodman and Hyams (2011), aphasia is a scientific term used to explained language disorder due to brain injuries caused by diseases or trauma. In other words, aphasia involves partial or total loss of the ability to

A critical portion in the brain in which speech is produced and controlled is in the “left precentral gyrus of the insula” , which is located behind the anterior temporal lobe (Dronkers). By looking at patients with and without apraxia, who damaged the same general area due to a stroke, this region of the brain was discovered. Authors Juliana Thompson and Margo Mckeever of the Journal of Clinical Nursing compose an article regarding a type of aphasia know as stroke aphasia, where they look at how the patient's health and well being is affected. The article refers to aphasia as a “loss of self” and discusses ways to analyze “self awareness exercises as methods of enhancing compassion skills”(Thompson, Mckeever). Here, what the authors are attempting to convey is the treatment possibilities to a disorder which can cause a patient to feel a type of disconnect due to their inability to communicate

In general, aphasia is the impairment of language functions due to localized brain damage. The three types of aphasia include Broca’s aphasia, Wernicke’s aphasia, and conduction aphasia. Broca’s aphasia involves reduced amounts, distorted articulation, and slow effortful speech. Wernicke’s aphasia involves a person being able to produce fluent speech, but if often difficult to make sense of. Conduction aphasia involves mispronouncing words, disrupted speech due to pauses and hesitations, and problems with repeating words said by someone else.

When considering the TROG-2 results in the context of a stroke patient, given the low score we may be able to confidently diagnose Susan as having acquired aphasia post-stroke. This aphasia has clearly affected her understanding of grammatical structure quite severely and as such, will have a significant effect on other areas of her life. In addition to complications in terms of communication, for example, people with aphasia often struggle with reading and driving skills (Ispahany, 2012). Moreover, given that Susan’s job is a clerical role as a school secretary she would presumably spend the majority of her time having to read and organize documents as well as communicating with various different parents and staff.

The aim of Maddy, Capiluto & McComas (2014) was to review the research evaluating the effectiveness of semantic feature analysis on reducing anomia in individuals with aphasia. They used seven databases to search for articles, and seven terms. The author’s search initially identified eighty-eight articles, eighteen of which were relevant. The authors then focused on research that was experimental in nature, examined semantic feature analysis as a treatment method, and included participants that were adults with neurological injury. Next, the parameters included that the articles had to be written in English, and had to have been published in a peer-reviewed journal from 1980 to June 2013. The authors did not include research that looked at semantic feature analysis in combination with another treatment approach. This left the authors with a total of eleven articles to review.

Aphasia is a language disorder that can be the result of a brain injury. An individual that is suffering from aphasia may experience difficulty speaking, writing, reading, or comprehending. There are three different types of Aphasia that differ in various ways. First, Wernicke’s Aphasia is the inability to grasp the meaning of words and sentences that have been produced by another individual. This type of aphasia is also known as “fluent aphasia” or “receptive aphasia”. Wernicke patients’ speech may come across like a jumble of words or jargon, but it is very well articulated and they have no issue producing their own connected speech. If the patient is consecutively making errors, it is common for them to be unaware of their difficulties, and not realize that their sentences don’t make sense. The severity of the disorder varies depending on the patient, and the disorder results form damage in the left posterior temporal region of the brain, which is also known as Wernicke’s area.

The purpose of this paper is to pursue one important and fundamental aim: language and the brain are purely inseparable since it allows us to perform essential tasks such as generating, comprehending and expressing speech. With damage to the brain, individuals can no longer perform such tasks which can ultimately lead to many types of language disorders. The focus of this paper is Broca’s aphasia, a language disorder characterized by the inability to produce written and spoken speech. Damage to the brain can cause many types of speech impairments as well as comprehension deficits.