Intensity of Aphasia Therapy, Impact on Recovery

TLDR: Intense therapy over a short amount of time can improve outcomes of speech and language therapy for stroke patients with aphasia.

Abstract: Background— It has been speculated that the conflicting results demonstrated across poststroke aphasia therapy studies might be related to differences in intensity of therapy provided across studies. The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between intensity of aphasia therapy and aphasia recovery. Methods— A MEDLINE literature search was conducted to retrieve clinical trials investigating aphasia therapy after stroke. Changes in mean scores from each study were recorded. Intensity of therapy was recorded in terms of length of therapy, hours of therapy provided per week, and total hours of therapy provided. Pearson correlation was used to assess the relationship between changes in mean scores of outcome measures and intensity of therapy. Results— Studies that demonstrated a significant treatment effect provided 8.8 hours of therapy per week for 11.2 weeks versus the negative studies that only provided ≈2 hours per week for 22.9 weeks. On average, positive studies provided a total of 98.4 h...