• Erin Godecke, Natalie A Ciccone, Andrew S Granger, Tapan Rai, Deborah West, Angela Cream, Jade Cartwright, and Graeme J Hankey.
• Faculty of Health, Engineering and Science, Edith Cowan University, Joondalup, WA, Australia; Clinical Centre of Research Excellence in Aphasia Rehabilitation, Brisbane, QLD, Australia.
• Int J Lang Commun Disord. 2014 Mar 1;49(2):149-61.

BackgroundVery early aphasia rehabilitation studies have shown mixed results. Differences in therapy intensity and therapy type contribute significantly to the equivocal results.AimsTo compare a standardized, prescribed very early aphasia therapy regimen with a historical usual care control group at therapy completion (4-5 weeks post-stroke) and again at follow-up (6 months).Methods & ProceduresThis study compared two cohorts from successive studies conducted in four Australian acute/sub-acute hospitals. The studies had near identical recruitment, blinded assessment and data-collection protocols. The Very Early Rehabilitation (VER) cohort (N = 20) had mild-severe aphasia and received up to 20 1-h sessions of impairment-based aphasia therapy, up to 5 weeks. The control cohort (n = 27) also had mild-severe aphasia and received usual care (UC) therapy for up to 4 weeks post-stroke. The primary outcome measure was the Aphasia Quotient (AQ) and a measure of communicative efficiency (DA) at therapy completion. Outcomes were measured at baseline, therapy completion and 6 months post-stroke and were compared using Generalised Estimating Equations (GEE) models.Outcomes & ResultsAfter controlling for initial aphasia and stroke disability, the GEE models demonstrated that at the primary end-point participants receiving VER achieved 18% greater recovery on the AQ and 1.5% higher DA scores than those in the control cohort. At 6 months, the VER participants maintained a 16% advantage in recovery on the AQ and 0.6% more on DA scores over the control cohort participants.Conclusions & ImplicationsA prescribed, impairment-based aphasia therapy regimen, provided daily in very early post-stroke recovery, resulted in significantly greater communication gains in people with mild-severe aphasia at completion of therapy and at 6 months, when compared with a historical control cohort. Further research is required to demonstrate large-scale and long-term efficacy.© 2014 Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists.

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