Language is considered one of the higher functions of the central nervous system. Accordingly, if the patient has symptoms of aphasia, it is considered to have neurological defects due to brain damage. Let’s explore what causes aphasia in this article!
Contents
What is aphasia?
Aphasia syndrome is defined as an acquired disorder at any stage, affecting the language ability of the patient. The root cause of damage to the functions of language is damage to the central nervous system, which impairs the functional integrity of the cerebral hemispheres in general, including language.
Therefore, the classification of speech disorders is very diverse, depending on the area of the lesion, and has different treatment methods.
However, aphasia needs to be differentiated from speech disorders. These are abnormalities in motor processes for expression and language development, not CNS damage.
What are the causes of aphasia?
Diseases that cause progressive nerve damage, such as gliomas, degenerative diseases, or multiple sclerosis, will cause the progression of language ability to progressively worsen.
In contrast, acute brain injuries such as cerebral infarction, cerebral hemorrhage, encephalitis, traumatic brain injury, or benign brain tumor that have undergone surgery will have the ability to restore language function if the disease progresses smoothly.
However, in cases where there is brain damage in both hemispheres, this is a huge barrier to language recovery.
What are the symptoms of aphasia?
Symptoms of aphasia are recognized and evaluated in many different ways by experienced neurologists. Thereby, these symptoms will help determine the location and cause of the damage and often accompany the symptoms of stroke, and cerebral infarction.
Typically, the symptoms of aphasia will be approached according to the three categories of aphasia: comprehension, fluency, and repetition. There are the following syndromes of language disorders:
Broca’s language disorder: Signs of good comprehension but reduced fluency and repetition. Often accompanied by weakness and loss of sensation on the right side of the body.
Transcortical motor language disorder: Still has good comprehension and repetition, but does not express the language fluently. The typical presentation is that the patient changes pronunciation and the tone of speech becomes confused.
Transcortical sensory language disorder: Speech retains good fluency, and good repetition while comprehension is reduced. Specifically, the patient can still speak clear, grammatically correct, and fluent long sentences that are not appropriate to the question.
Mixed transcortical language disorder: The patient has both decreased fluency and decreased comprehension while the ability to repeat is still good. Specifically, the patient can only speak spontaneous words, short sentences tend to repeat the same when asked questions.
Wernicke language disorder: Patients still express themselves verbally fluently with long, smooth, grammatically correct sentences; pronunciation and speech rhythm is normal. However, the ability to listen, understand, and do the right request or answer the question correctly is poor.
Conductive language disorder: Only causes impaired repetition while comprehension and fluency are still good. Accordingly, the patient still correctly answered the questions with long, fluent sentences. However, when asking the patient to repeat a sentence or retell the story, or read the words out loud, the words become confused and there is a phenomenon of word substitution.
Generalized language disorder: The most severe of the language disorder classifications. The patient has severe loss of all speech functions, including motor and sensory language functions.
How is aphasia syndrome treated?
Of all the methods of speech therapy, there is no one method that is best suited for all patients. Therefore, treatment focuses on the goal to be achieved, not merely on improving the patient’s speech function. For example, the patient can be taught to use pictures or symbols if the patient is severely impaired.
Besides, repetition and diligence are also very important in the process of language recovery. This should be maintained during the patient’s stay in the hospital for rehabilitation training and until discharge from the outpatient therapy program. At this time, the supportive and interactive role of caregivers and family members can also help speed up recovery.
The duration of therapy in aphasia syndrome is almost lifelong, along with the recovery of other neurological functions. However, the time to evaluate the effectiveness of a treatment is usually at least 3 to 6 months.
If the goal is not achieved, treatment failure is often due to the wrong goal setting or the wrong choice of method rather than its effectiveness. If goals have been achieved, the patient should be encouraged to continue to practice with himself and with others to further improve his fine language function in the long term.
Final thought
In summary, aphasia syndrome is a manifestation of defects caused by damage to the central nervous system. The causes, symptoms, and treatment are varied, depending on the specific situation. It is important to determine the right approach and determine the right goals of therapy, the patient will have a better prognosis for recovery of language ability. To help find the cause of aphasia, patients need to conduct paraclinical tests at reputable and quality medical facilities.
Top News hopes this article can help you learn more about what causes aphasia and effective ways to deal with it.
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