Speech Therapy for Aphasia: Comparing Two Treatments (PMvSFA)

VA Office of Research and Development

Status: Completed

Conditions: Stroke

Treatments: Behavioral: Semantic Feature Analysis therapy; Behavioral: Phonomotor Therapy

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other; Other U.S. Federal agency

Identifiers

NCT02153710

O1183-R

Details and patient eligibility

About

This is a behavioral speech therapy trial for individuals who have suffered a stroke on the left side of the brain and have difficulty speaking. The name of this disorder is called "aphasia." Individuals in this study will receive one of two treatments. The first is a phonological (sound level) treatment and the second is a semantic (word level) treatment. Individuals in both groups will receive 60 hours of therapy for free (2 hours/day, 5 days/week, 6 weeks).

Full description

Purpose: The ultimate goal of anomia treatment should be to achieve gains in exemplars trained in the therapy session as well as generalization to untrained exemplars and contexts. Phonomotor treatment (PMT) has shown such effects but has not yet been compared to a commonly used lexical/semantic based treatment (semantic feature analysis; SFA).

Methods: In a between group randomized controlled trial, 58 persons with aphasia characterized by anomia and phonological dysfunction were randomized to receive 56-60 hours of intensively delivered treatment over 6 weeks with testing pre-, post- and three-months post treatment termination.

Enrollment: 58 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Single, left-hemisphere stroke
• English as primary language prior to stroke

Exclusion criteria

• Other neurological disorders
• Untreated depression

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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58 participants in 2 patient groups

Phonomotor therapy

Experimental group

Description:

Experimental group

Treatment:

Behavioral: Phonomotor Therapy

Semantic Feature Analysis therapy

Active Comparator group

Description:

Current standard of care therapy

Treatment:

Behavioral: Semantic Feature Analysis therapy