People who’ve experienced a Stroke can lose the ability to use or understand speech, a problem known as aphasia. Now, new research suggests that a short-term type of intense language training called constraint-induced aphasia therapy (CIAT) can improve language function in these patients.

“Following a Stroke and especially in the chronic stage of disease the best thing you can do is to enforce an intensive training,” said Dr. Marcus Meinzer, from the University of Konstanz, Germany.

As reported in the medical journal Stroke, Meinzer and colleagues investigated the impact of CIAT, which includes intensive training, increasing level of language task difficulty, and limitation of nonverbal communication strategies, and CIATplus, which adds written materials and photographs of everyday situations, on language functions in 27 patients with aphasia.

Significant improvements in a standardized language test were seen after CIAT and CIATplus, the authors report, and the improvements persisted throughout 6 months of follow-up. Overall, 85 percent of patients showed some degree of improvement.

After training was completed, the researchers note, only relatives of patients trained by CIATplus reported further improvements in the quality of everyday communication. Relatives of patients in the CIATplus group also reported an increase in the quality of their comprehension.

“The present study replicated the results of a pilot study in which language functions were shown to improve within a very short period of time even in the chronic stage of aphasia after CIAT,” the investigators conclude. “Most interestingly, the improvements were equally found among patients (regardless) of age, severity, and duration of aphasia.”

To increase their chances of success with these training programs, patients should “work on their deficits as hard as possible,” and be aware “that progress might be slow, but small steps are the necessary prerequisite of further improvements,” Meinzer noted.

SOURCE: Stroke, July 2005.