Carers in post-stroke aphasia: a scoping review of interventions and outcomes beyond communication partner training.

Purpose: Carers of people with aphasia face unique challenges. Research has demonstrated that these carers have a higher burden of care and more negative stroke-related outcomes in comparison to carers of stroke survivors without aphasia. The aim of this scoping review was to map the range of interventions for carers other than communication partner training and to examine their outcomes.

Establishing Quality Indicators and Implementation Priorities for Post-Stroke Aphasia Services Through End-User Involvement.

Background: Currently, there are no agreed quality standards for post-stroke aphasia services. Therefore, it is unknown if care reflects best practices or meets the expectations of people living with aphasia. We aimed to (1) shortlist, (2) operationalise and (3) prioritise best practice recommendations for post-stroke aphasia care.

Adapting a group-based, multimodal aphasia treatment for telehealth - co-design of M-MAT Tele.

Multi-Modality Aphasia Treatment (M-MAT) is an effective group intervention for post-stroke aphasia. M-MAT employs interactive card games and the modalities of gesture, drawing, reading, and writing to improve spoken language. However, there are challenges to implementation of group interventions such as M-MAT, particularly for those who cannot travel or live in rural areas.

Positive effects of speech and language therapy group interventions in primary progressive aphasia: A systematic review.

Background: Primary progressive aphasia (PPA) is a neurodegenerative condition characterised by a prominent and progressive deterioration in language abilities, which significantly impacts quality of life and interpersonal relationships. Speech and language therapy plays a crucial role in offering interventions. Group intervention is one mode of delivery that could benefit communication functioning and overall wellbeing of people with PPA (pwPPA) and their care partners.

AI-Generated Images for Speech Pathology-An Exploratory Application to Aphasia Assessment and Intervention Materials.

Purpose: Images are a core component of aphasia assessment and intervention that require significant resources to produce or source. Text-to-image generation is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology that has recently made significant advances and could be a source of low-cost, highly customizable images. The aim of this study was to explore the potential of AI image generation for use in aphasia by examining its efficiency and cost during generation of typical images.

Examining Dose Frameworks to Improve Aphasia Rehabilitation Research.

The effect of treatment dose on recovery of post-stroke aphasia is not well understood. Inconsistent conceptualization, measurement, and reporting of the multiple dimensions of dose hinders efforts to evaluate dose-response relations in aphasia rehabilitation research. We review the state of dose conceptualization in aphasia rehabilitation and compare the applicability of 3 existing dose frameworks to aphasia rehabilitation research-the Frequency, Intensity, Time, and Type (FITT) principle, the Cumulative Intervention Intensity (CII) framework, and the Multidimensional Dose Articulation Framework (MDAF).

Results of the COMPARE trial of Constraint-induced or Multimodality Aphasia Therapy compared with usual care in chronic post-stroke aphasia.

Background: While meta-analyses confirm treatment for chronic post-stroke aphasia is effective, a lack of comparative evidence for different interventions limits prescription accuracy. We investigated whether Constraint-Induced Aphasia Therapy Plus (CIAT-plus) and/or Multimodality Aphasia Therapy (M-MAT) provided greater therapeutic benefit compared with usual community care and were differentially effective according to baseline aphasia severity.

Methods: We conducted a three-arm, multicentre, parallel group, open-label, blinded endpoint, phase III, randomised-controlled trial.

A systematic review of maintenance following intensive therapy programs in chronic post-stroke aphasia: importance of individual response analysis.

Purpose: Recent evidence supports the benefit of intensive aphasia intervention programs for people with chronic aphasia, yet it is unclear if all participants can expect positive outcomes and for how long therapeutic gains last.

Methods: We systematically searched for studies investigating intensive interventions in chronic aphasia. To explore individual response rates and maintenance of therapeutic gains we carried out meta-synthesis by calculating and analysing the Standard Error of Measurement and Minimal Detectable Change metrics of six common outcome measures.

Developments in the application of Intensive Comprehensive Aphasia Programs: an international survey of practice.

Purpose: Intensive Comprehensive Aphasia Programs (ICAPs) were first described in 2013 with an international survey documenting 12 unique programs. ICAPs involve high dose intervention delivered in both group and individual settings, targeting communication across impairment, functioning, participation, and contextual domains. In this study, we aimed to investigate international growth in ICAPs.

Dose effects in behavioural treatment of post-stroke aphasia: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

Purpose: Aphasia is a debilitating chronic acquired language disorder that impacts heavily on a person's life. Behavioural treatments aim to remediate language processing skills or to enhance communication between the person with aphasia and others, and a number of different treatments are efficacious. However, it is unclear how much of a particular treatment a person needs in order to optimise recovery of language and communication skills following stroke.

Treatment dose in post-stroke aphasia: A systematic scoping review.

Little is known about how the amount of treatment a person with aphasia receives impacts aphasia recovery following stroke, yet this information is vital to ensure effective treatments are delivered efficiently. Furthermore, there is no standard dose terminology in the stroke rehabilitation or aphasia literature. This scoping review aims to systematically map the evidence regarding dose in treatments for post-stroke aphasia and to explore how treatment dose is conceptualized, measured and reported in the literature.

Comparing higher and lower weekly treatment intensity for chronic aphasia: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

Optimizing intensity for aphasia treatment is a high priority research issue for people with aphasia, their families and clinicians, and could result in healthcare cost savings. An important aspect of intensity is the frequency of intervention, or how regularly treatment should be provided each week. While principles of neuroplasticity endorse massed practice, cognitive psychology has established superiority of distributed practice within normal learning.

What Is Meant by "Multimodal Therapy" for Aphasia?

Purpose Multimodal therapy is a frequent term in aphasia literature, but it has no agreed upon definition. Phrases such as "multimodal therapy" and "multimodal treatment" are applied to a range of aphasia interventions as if mutually understood, and yet, the interventions reported in the literature differ significantly in methodology, approach, and aims. This inconsistency can be problematic for researchers, policy makers, and clinicians accessing the literature and potentially compromises data synthesis and meta-analysis.

Constraint and multimodal approaches to therapy for chronic aphasia: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

Aphasia is a significant cause of disability and reduced quality of life. Two speech pathology treatment approaches appear efficacious: multimodal and constraint-induced aphasia therapies. In constraint-induced therapies, non-verbal actions (e.

Alternating and sequential motion rates in older adults.

Background: Alternating motion rate (AMR) and sequential motion rate (SMR) are tests of articulatory diadochokinesis that are widely used in the evaluation of motor speech. However, there are no quality normative data available for adults aged 65 years and older.

Aims: There were two aims: (1) to obtain a representative, normative dataset of diadochokinetic rates from adults aged 65 years and older; and (2) to examine the effects of age and gender on those rates.