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According to the National Aphasia Association it is estimated that approximately 1 million people in the United States currently have aphasia, a language disorder resulting from damage to portions of the brain that control language. This disorder affects the production or comprehension of speech and the ability to read or write.
The NAA also noted that aphasia is always due to brain injury most commonly from a stroke, but can also be the result of head trauma, brain tumors or infections. Aphasia affects each patient differently. It may affect a single aspect of communication such as reading or putting words together into sentences. More commonly, however, multiple aspects of communication are impaired.
Brad Hodge, M.S., CCC-SLP, a speech pathologist at Covenant Health System said, "Typically when someone comes in to the hospital after a stroke, we begin treating them within the first three days."
According to the NAA, there are different types of aphasia that correspond to the brain injury of the individual. Some of the common types of aphasia are:
- Global aphasia: most severe type, patients can produce few recognizable words, have trouble with comprehension and are unable to read or write;
- Broca's aphasia: speech output is severely reduced, patients are able to comprehend speech, but formation of sounds is impaired and vocabulary is reduced;
- Mixed non-fluent aphasia: applied to patients who have sparse and effortful speech and limited comprehension; and
- Anomic aphasia: inability to supply words.
Hodge noted that people with aphasia do not always understand everything being said to them, but they will appear to comprehend. It is hard to communicate with someone who has aphasia if you do not understand the disorder. Therapy has been shown to be very effective in improving communication skills.
"A lot of what we do is education. We assess the patient and begin educating the patient and their family," Hodge said. "Our primary goal is restoring some form of effective communication."
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