What is Aphasia? Is any treatment possible?

What is Aphasia?

Aphasia is a communication disorder. It is caused by some damage or injury of language parts in brain. It is extremely common in old citizens, mainly due to attack of a stroke. Aphasia has an effect on the capability of the person to understand or use dissimilar words though it does not harm his intelligence. People with aphasia can have trouble in communication and also in finding the "precise" words or clearly mentioning their thoughts. They can face troubles in writing words, understanding discussion, written or reading words and using numbers. Aphasia usually happens suddenly. It may also the result of head injury or stroke. It may also develop gradually with diseases like brain tumor, infection or dementia. Aphasia may also occur with speech disorders like dysarthria of speech.

Causes

Aphasia is usually rooted in damaged language area of brain caused by brain stroke. In stroke the blood does not arrive at a brain part. Brain cells turn out to be dead without the normal blood supply because it carries oxygen and also important nutrients. Some other brain damage causes comprise brain infections, Alzheimer's disease, brain tumors, stern blow on head as well as other conditions, which affect the brain.

Symptoms

The primary symptoms of aphasia are:

Trouble in speaking, struggle in finding appropriate word or term; making use of inappropriate and strange words during the conversation, troubles in understanding what other people are saying

Diagnosis

Usually, Aphasia is initially diagnosed by the physician, who is treating the brain injury, generally a neurologist. The physician firstly carries out all the required tests. If there is chance of having aphasia, the patient is further referred to speech-language pathologist, who performs complete assessment of communication capabilities of the person. The assessment comprises convey ideas, person’s speaking abilities, writing abilities, language writing abilities and understanding.

Types of Aphasia

There are numerous types of the aphasia on hand.  Each type has its individual damaging effects to patient. Most common varieties of aphasia include as follows:

Anomic Aphasia

In anomic aphasia, the patient has difficulties in finding the word, which is called, Anomia. In this case the patient develops inability to find correct words for speaking and writing.

Expressive Aphasia

In expressive aphasia, the patient knows what he or she wants to speak but find difficulty in communicating with others.

Global Aphasia

This is most persistent of the aphasia types. It is generally seen after stroke. In global aphasia, patient finds difficulty in speaking and understanding words. Also patient is not able to write and read.

Primary Progressive Aphasia

It is a progressive disorder. With primary progressive aphasia, the patient loses ability to write, read, and talk. There is no treatment obtainable for treating primary progressive aphasia. People having prime progressive aphasia can correspond all the way through gestures.

Receptive Aphasia

In receptive aphasia, patient can hear a voice, but cannot realize the meaning. So usually patient with receptive aphasia have to utilize figurative language.

Treatment

In most of cases, language recovery is not speedy enough. Several people with aphasia experience partial recovery, with a little language skill reappear after brain injury, but originally, fraction aphasia still remains. In circumstances like this, speech-language therapy might prove quite helpful. Factors which cause the improvement enormously are cause of brain damage, level of brain injury, region of brain damaged, individual’s health and age factor. Some other factors take account of individual’s health motivation and educational level.