Prognosis for improved verbal communication in aphasic stroke patients

Information for predicting to what degree a patient will recover from aphasia has not been available to the physician. This study examined the role of 10 selected prognostic variables in relation to recovery of verbal communication in a homogeneous sample of treated aphasic patients. Terminal speech performance (TSP) could be discriminated 86% of the time by 6 variables: (1) initial severity of aphasia, (2) number of months after stroke, (3) auditory comprehension ability, (4) age, (5) speech fluency, and (6) general health. The predictive value of these variables was slightly higher (91.2%) for patients with good TSP than for those with poor TSP (82.6%).