Aphasia

Aphasia: definition

The term "aphasia" includes a heterogeneous and multiform group of language deficits, usually resulting from brain pathologies: in general, "aphasia" identifies an alteration in the ability to understand and use both words and verbal expressions. In other words, aphasic patients are unable to turn their thoughts into words. An aphasic should not be considered a fool or a demented: the injuries caused by aphasia do not alter the intelligence of the patients, nor the ability to experience sensations and feelings.

Aphasia: incidence

Unfortunately, aphasia is a fairly frequent disorder in our country: medical statistics, in fact, report approximately 150,000 aphasia patients in Italy. Aphasia can be considered a senile age disorder, as it is rare in children and adults: it afflicts 40% of stroke patients in the hemisphere left, cerebral locus including the cortical centers of language (in 95% of right-handed subjects and in 60% of left-handed subjects) [taken from www.msd-italia.it].
What worries the health care is the fact that aphasic patients seem to increase from year to year: in fact, annually, approximately 20,000 new cases occur.

Meaning of the term

The term aphasia comes from the Greek α'φασία, what does it mean silence: although the literal translation indicates the total incapacity of elocution, aphasia is not synonymous with silence proper, nor with dysarthria (inability to articulate words). More precisely, an aphasic patient is not always defined as "the one who does not speaks ”, but as“ the one who speaks, without the ability to communicate. ”From a syntactic and semantic point of view, the language of aphasics is meaningless.

General description

"Aphasia" is an often reductive term, used to identify speech diseases and all associated disorders: in fact, "aphasia does not only affect the production of words, but also the structuring of the same, the understanding of language and the repetition of words. words.The disease affects multiple aspects of communication, depending on the areas of the brain affected and the severity of the disorder. Again, aphasia can only affect the ability to repeat a word or phrase, to express a concept, to speak or to write.

Aphasia: causes

Aphasia can result from stroke, head trauma, multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer's disease; more generally, any brain deficit can generate aphasia when it involves the brain structures used for speech processing (generally, the Wernicke area and the "Broca's area) or in any case the dominant hemisphere.

The brain areas most involved mostly concern the left hemisphere for right-handed individuals; when aphasia affects the right hemisphere, we speak correctly of cross aphasia (rare case).
In the vast majority of cases, the cause of aphasia lies in a vascular lesion: more precisely, it is called cerebropathy. When a "cerebral artery ruptures or becomes occluded, it triggers a chain of events: the blood spreads in the brain causing haemorrhage, respectively. or ischemia, or in other cases a stroke (cerebral apoplexy or stroke). Other possible causes of aphasia include: transient ischemia (aphasia regresses in a few hours / days), cerebral infarcts, encephalitis and infectious processes, partial seizures (aphasia disappears in a few minutes), migraine attacks . Aphasia has also been diagnosed in some patients with brain tumors (rare).

Associated diseases

Aphasia is only rarely the only symptom of a pathology: in fact, more frequently, lesions affecting the brain (near the areas of language regulation) are also transmitted to adjacent cerebral loci, thus affecting other functions.
Strictly speaking, aphasic patients tend to have other disorders, such as:

Dysarthria: Inability or difficulty in articulating words.
Apraxia: inability to control movement in order to perform an action, even as simple as eating or writing. Apraxia expresses a neurological deficit of the voluntary musculature.
Hemiplagia: paralysis of the half body.
Hemiparesis: partial loss of the ability to move.
Amnesia: It must not seem strange that many patients with aphasia also suffer from memory loss, considering that most of the memories are imprinted in the mind also thanks to the word. However, in similar situations, it seems that ataxic and amnesic patients tend to remember that event after help from those close to them: in general, memory loss is not permanent.
Hemianopia: vision is partially denied. Hemianopsic patients are unable to see what lies beyond their right half of the space.
Seizures sometimes associated with loss of consciousness.
Movement alteration: irritability, apathy, lack of control of actions.

In any case, each person with aphasia responds differently and subjectively to the disease: the resulting clinical picture, in fact, is unique, since the symptoms accompanying the disorder vary from person to person.

Aphasia: associations

Aphasic subjects can contact the ALIAS association, born in Italy around 1996: it is an organization of volunteers, aimed at informing, sensitizing and involving the population. The goal of ALIAS is to seek an alternative program aimed at facilitating communication of aphasic patients and, at the same time, to find an alternative therapy, stimulating medical research.
Another federation, the A.IT.A - acronym for Aphasic Italian Associations - is made up of aphasic patients, family members, volunteers and neurologist specialists, speech therapists and therapists; it is financed both by private and public entities and by the members belonging to the organization.
The A.IT.A has the objectives of encouraging research, informing the population, planning conferences and seminars, promoting contact between the patient and the family member, entering into associations and promoting assistance and volunteering for those affected by aphasia. [taken from www.aitafederazione.it]