Telerehabilitation of anomia in primary progressive aphasia

Abstract

Background: The efficacy of telerehabilitation-based treatment for anomia has been demonstrated in post-stroke aphasia, but the efficacy of this method of anomia treatment delivery has not been established within the context of degenerative illness.

Aims: The current study evaluated the feasibility and efficacy of a telerehabilitation-based approach to anomia treatment within the three subtypes of primary progressive aphasia (PPA).

Methods & Procedures: Each of the three telerehabilitation participants represented a distinct subtype of PPA. Following a baseline evaluation of language and cognition, a phonological treatment and an orthographic treatment were administered to all participants over the course of 6 months. One month after the end of treatment, a post-treatment evaluation began. All treatment sessions and the majority of the evaluation sessions were administered via telerehabilitation. Treatment effects were examined within each subject, and treatment effects were also compared between each telerehabilitation participant and a group of in-person participants who had the same subtype of PPA.

Outcomes & Results: All three telerehabilitation participants exhibited positive treatment effects. CGR (nonfluent/agrammatic variant PPA) and WCH (logopenic variant PPA) showed maintenance of naming for prophylaxis items under both treatment conditions, while ACR (semantic variant PPA) demonstrated increased naming of remediation items under the phonological treatment condition. Compared to in-person participants with the same subtype of PPA, each of the telerehabilitation participants typically showed effects that were either within the expected range or larger than expected.

Conclusions: Telerehabilitation-based anomia treatment is feasible and effective in all three subtypes of PPA.

Keywords:

• telerehabilitation
• primary progressive aphasia
• anomia

Notes

1. The range in the number of items per condition for in-person participants is also reported in Table 4.

2. Due to differences in the number of items per condition, for ACR statistical power for single-subject analyses was greater for remediation items, and for WCH statistical power for single-subject analyses was greater for prophylaxis items.

3. See Supplemental Table 4 for the in-person participants’ post-treatment naming accuracy for Exemplar 1 prophylaxis items in UC.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) [grant number R01DC011317], [grant number R01DC011317-01AS1].