Telerehabilitation in poststroke anomia

Michela Agostini, Martina Garzon, Silvia Benavides-Varela, Serena De Pellegrin, Giulia Bencini, Giulia Rossi, Sara Rosadoni, Mauro Mancuso, Andrea Turolla, Francesca Meneghello, Paolo Tonin, Michela Agostini, Martina Garzon, Silvia Benavides-Varela, Serena De Pellegrin, Giulia Bencini, Giulia Rossi, Sara Rosadoni, Mauro Mancuso, Andrea Turolla, Francesca Meneghello, Paolo Tonin

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.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Experimental design.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Two interfaces (one for the therapist and one for the patient) used during teletreatment.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Patient's improvement on naming treated items compared to baseline naming performance.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Patient's performance on nontreated items with respect to baseline performance.

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