Case Study
Moderate Wernicke's Aphasia
Age: 53
Time since stroke: 8 months
Problems
James was a small business owner and the leader of a group of salespeople. He’d been a gifted speaker, making commercials and conducting his business marketing.He needed to return to work to keep his business going as his wife worked full-time. He also wanted to say names of his employees and family members.
Assessment
Using The Aphasia Center's testing protocols
- Poor repetition
- Drew detailed pictures or gestured during breakdowns
- Comfortable with using technology
- Frequently unaware of speech errors ("is that right?")
- Repeated attempts to repeat/correct speech, which made it worse
- Speech approximately 40% intelligible secondary to paraphasias and neologisms
- Spoke very quickly
Treatment
He completed a 5-week program
and My Aphasia Coach software homework daily.
Results
Before
After
Repetition
7%
19%
Sentence organization 6 words
0%
83%
Writing personal info
33%
83%
Cartoon description
13%
44%
Open-ended questions
42%
92%
Outcome
- His speech accuracy increased from 40% to 80%. His awareness for speech errors improved, and ability to self-correct.
- Said his spouse, children’s, and employees names independently
- Wrote words to help the listener when he got stuck
- Speech errors became only one sound different than target word (‘paid’ for ‘made’)
- Learned how to independently navigate his phone and Ipad