[Transcranial direct current stimulation and speech therapy intervention in people with aphasia: a systematic review of the literature].

Introduction: The recovery of aphasia may require adjuvant therapies to speech therapy rehabilitation. Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a non-invasive neuromodulatory technique that can be used to improve cortical brain activity.

Aim: To offer an overview of the tDCS in people with aphasia from a speech therapy point of view.

Patients And Methods: Thirty-five studies have been analyzed that performed online interventions (the application of tDCS in conjunction with any type of aphasia therapy) and offline interventions (performing speech therapy training before or after tDCS stimulation). The studies were published during the last ten years (January 2009-2019). PubMed, Scopus and Embase databases were reviewed in the analysis.

Results: Most studies include heterogeneous samples without taking into account the symptoms of each type of aphasia and without individualizing the treatments used. Anomie is the most commonly treated language deficit.

Conclusions: It is better to perform tDCS in conjunction with online speech therapy. The tDCS is a technique that can help improve the language deficits of people with aphasia. Speech therapy interventions based on neuroscientific knowledge that have an impact on the daily life of people with aphasia should be performed.