Improving outcomes for persons with aphasia in advanced community-based treatment programs.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Studies have yet to document that community-based aphasia treatment programs routinely produce results comparable or superior to published research protocols. We explore this issue here in an outcome study of individuals with aphasia enrolled in 2 community-based, comparably managed and equipped therapy programs, which use a specially designed computer-based tool that is employed therapeutically in adherence to an extensive, detailed, and formally trained patient care algorithm. METHODS Patients (n=60) were assessed before and after treatment with standardized instruments at both the impairment and the disability levels. Pretreatment and posttreatment means were calculated and compared, with statistical significance of differences established with the use of 1-tailed matched t tests. One-way ANOVAs were used to analyze the comparability of patient performance changes among various subgroups, eg, patients in acute versus chronic stages of aphasia, patients by aphasia diagnostic type at start of care, patients by severity level at start of care, and patients by treatment location. RESULTS Analysis shows that patients spanned a wide range of aphasia diagnostic types, impairment severity levels at start of care, and times after onset. Patients' mean performance scores improved significantly in response to treatment in all measures assessed at both the impairment level and the functional communication level. Mean overall improvements ranged from 6.6% to 19.8%, with statistical significance ranging from P=0.0006 to P<0.0001. ANOVAs revealed no significant differences between improvements in patients in the acute versus chronic stages of aphasia, between those at different impairment severity levels at start of care, between those treated at different locations, or, at the functional level, between those with different diagnostic types of aphasia at start of care. CONCLUSIONS Measures of both language impairment and functional communication can be broadly, positively, and significantly influenced by therapy services that are delivered to persons with aphasia in these community-based programs. The significant improvements are shown to be available to individuals with chronic as well as acute aphasia and independent of diagnostic type of aphasia, impairment severity at start of care, or geographic program location.