NCT04682223

Telerehabilitation for Aphasia (TERRA)

Center for the Study of Aphasia Recovery (C-STAR): Telerehabilitation for Aphasia (TERRA)

• Status: Recruiting
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 100 (estimated)
• Sponsor: University of South Carolina · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 21 Years – 80 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

Speech-language therapy is generally found to be helpful in the rehabilitation of aphasia. However, not all patients with aphasia have access to adequate treatment to maximize their recovery. The goal of this project is to compare the efficacy of telerehabilitation or Aphasia Remote Therapy (ART) to the more traditional In-Clinic Therapy (I-CT).

Detailed description

Stroke is the leading cause of adult disability in the United States. One of the most debilitating impairments resulting from stroke is aphasia, a language disorder caused by damage to the left hemisphere of the brain. While evidence shows that aphasia therapy improves speech production and communicative quality of life in persons with chronic (\>6 months) stroke-induced aphasia, the amount of therapy provided to patients in the United States is typically far less than what is probably necessary to maximize recovery. There are a few important reasons underlying this discrepancy. For example, considerable emphasis is placed on acute and subacute stroke recovery with less therapy focus on the chronic period, when recovery is usually slower. Also, access to rehabilitation services can be limited by the availability of providers (e.g., in rural regions) or by difficulties with transportation logistics related to disabilities and the physical sequelae of stroke. One way to increase access to aphasia therapy is to rely on telerehabilitation (a.k.a., aphasia remote therapy; ART). So far, telerehabilitation in stroke has primarily focused on physical therapy, with only a handful of smaller studies involving aphasia therapy. The purpose of this study is to compare aphasia therapy administered via ART to aphasia therapy administered in person (In-Clinic Therapy; I-CT). We will conduct the first phase II, non-inferiority trial of telerehabilitation for aphasia therapy that is exclusively administered by a speech-language pathologist. Participants with chronic aphasia will be randomized to either a telerehabilitation or aphasia remote therapy (ART) group or an in-clinic therapy (I-CT) group relying on the same therapy approach currently used in our ongoing POLAR study. The outcome measure will focus on speech production and combines correct naming on the Philadelphia Naming Test and correct words produced per minute (CWPM) during discourse. The primary endpoint is change in the outcome measure at 6 months compared to baseline. The non-inferiority margin will be set so that if ART leads to less than 50% improvement than the improvement following I-CT, it will be considered inferior for therapy delivery. Neuroimaging will be used to evaluate how aphasia is shaped by the stroke lesion in combination with residual brain integrity.

Conditions

• Aphasia
• Stroke
• Stroke Rehabilitation

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	Semantically-focused therapy tasks	1\) Semantic feature analysis (SFA; Boyle \& Coelho, 1995; Boyle, 2004). For each pictured stimulus the participant is prompted to name the picture. Then, s/he is encouraged to produce semantically related words that represent features similar to the target word. 2) Semantic barrier task. This approach includes features of the Promoting Aphasics' Communication Effectiveness (PACE; Davis \& Wilcox,1985). The goal of the task is for one participant (e.g., person with aphasia) to describe each card so that the other participant (e.g., clinician) can guess the picture on the card. 3) Verb network strengthening therapy (VNeST; Edmonds et al., 2009; 2014) targets lexical retrieval of verbs and their thematic nouns. The objective of VNeST is for the participant to generate verb-noun associates with the purpose of strengthening the connections between the verb and its thematic roles.
BEHAVIORAL	Phonologically-focused therapy tasks	1\) Phonological components analysis task (PCA; Leonard et al., 2008). The participant first attempts to name a given picture and then to identify the phonological features of the target words. 2) Phonological production task focuses on the identification of phonological features of targeted, imageable nouns and verbs. It requires the participant to sort picture stimuli based on the number of syllables and then to identify a hierarchy of phonological features. Once each targeted feature is identified for the pair of words, the participant is required to blend the syllables/sounds together. 3) Phonological judgment task relies on computerized presentation of verbs and nouns where participants are required to judge whether pairs of words include similar phonological features (e.g. # of syllables, initial phonemes, final phonemes, rhyming).

Timeline

• Start date: 2021-05-05
• Primary completion: 2027-01-01
• Completion: 2027-03-01
• First posted: 2020-12-23
• Last updated: 2026-04-02

Locations

1 site across 1 country: United States