Case Study
Moderate Wernicke's Aphasia
Age: 79
Time since stroke: 15 months
Problems
Jane wanted to have conversations and to read again. As a former professor and advanced degree nurse, she loved to help people and to learn.Unfortunately, her fluent aphasia was approximately 50% understandable to listeners due to neologisms (nonsense words) and paraphasias (mistakes that are sound similar to the word). She could not fix her mistakes when she noticed them, and the more she tried to fix them, the further she got from what she wanted to say. This was very discouraging to her and she would give up.
Assessment
Using The Aphasia Center's testing protocols
- Relatively good comprehension in context
- Sometimes repeated up to 4 syllables
- Emerging awareness of deficits
- Some gesturing and describing to support communication
- Some requests for clarification (i.e. "What do you mean?")
- Reading comprehension of some single words
- Copying short sentences
Treatment
She completed a 6-week program
and My Aphasia Coach software homework daily.
Results
Before
After
Naming
50%
70%
Reading
0%
37%
Writing
16%
33%
Word Comprehension
50%
75%
Outcome
- Learned better strategies to help her communicate more effectively
- Initiated these strategies independently
- Improved her ability to self-correct her speech
- Stopped trying to fix her speech after two failed attempts
- Learned to use her phone and computer more independently
- Speech improved from 50% to 70% intelligibility to the listener