[Dysphagia] Off topic: aphasia

[eripley at yahoo.com (Irene Campbell-Taylor)]

At a recent workshop I gave, one of the atendees told me of remarkable improvement ina patient, completely non-verbal six years post insult with LCVA?R hemiplegia until put on Aricept. Found the following of interest:
  A more recent double-blind RCT by Berthier and colleagues9 cited by Lennihan, suggested that donepezil might be of value for stroke patients with chronic (ie, lasting 1 year or longer) aphasia. Greater improvements were seen in Western Aphasia Battery and Psycholinguistic Assessment of Language Processing in Aphasia scale scores in treated patients compared with controls (6.4 vs 3.5 and 4.6 vs 21.0, respectively). Patients only received 2 hours per week of standard language therapy in this study.
   
  A randomized, placebo-controlled study of donepezil in poststroke aphasia NEUROLOGY 2006;67:1687-1689
  M. L. Berthier, MD, PhD, C. Green, PhD, C. Higueras, PhD, I. Fern?ndez, PhD, J. Hinojosa, PhD and M. C. Mart?n, PhD 
  We studied 26 patients in a randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind parallel trial to evaluate the efficacy and safety of donepezil in chronic poststroke aphasia. Donepezil (10 mg/day) improved aphasia severity at endpoint (week 16) relative to placebo (p = 0.037). 
   
   
   


Dr I Campbell-Taylor
Clinical Neuroscientist
Exclusive Distributor:
www.interactivetherapy.com