Determinants of aphasia recovery: exploratory decision tree analysis

ABSTRACT

One hundred and sixty-three aphasia patients underwent initial language examination during the first week following stroke and 90–100 days post-stroke. Demographic factors (age, gender, and number of years of formal education), lesion-related factors (type of stroke, lesion volume, cortical versus sub-cortical location, and site of lesion), as well as initial severity and type of aphasia were taken as independent variables while aphasia recovery (in terms of no change versus change to a milder type or complete recovery) was the dependent variable. Chi square automatic interaction detection (CHAID) was performed to assess predictor importance and formulate a predictive model for aphasia recovery. Initial severity of aphasia followed by initial aphasia symptomatology was found to be the most important factor determining aphasia recovery. Age and gender had some importance. Lesion-related factors did not reach statistical significance as independent determinant of aphasia recovery. The predictive value of the model was 66.87%

KEYWORDS:

• Aphasia recovery
• aphasia severity
• aphasia symptomatology
• decision tree analysis
• recovery prediction

Acknowledgements

We are sincerely thankful to Professor Stefano F. Cappa for his valuable guidance in preparing a former version of the manuscript, Professor David Copland and Professor Loraine K. Obler for sharing their thoughts during the initial presentation of this work and Professor Marsel M. Mesulam for his suggestions at different points while conducting the “Kolkata aphasia study”. We extend our sincere gratitude to Adriana Ardila for her editorial support. Preliminary findings of this paper were presented at the 57th annual meeting of the Academy of Aphasia in Macau, China (October 27–29, 2019). This paper was accepted for presentation and received an international scholarship award (2020) at the 72nd Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Neurology (this meeting was called off due to COVID-19 pandemic).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).