Attentional Impairments of Aphasic Patients in the Acute and Postacute Phase after Stroke

Attention deficits as well as aphasia are being frequently observed among post-stroke patients. However, studies analysing attentional deficits of aphasic patients in the acute phase after stroke are rare. Therefore, the aim of the study was to investigate attentional deficits in stroke patients with aphasia, the relationship between attentional and linguistic deficits as well as changes in these domains from acute to post-acute phase. Twelve patients with first insult in the left hemisphere, aged between 45 to 88 years were included. Each patient completed a linguistic and a neuropsychological assessment Bielefeld Aphasie Screening (BiAS); attention test of the Aphasie-Check-Liste (ACL); Reduced Symbol-Digit-Test (R-SDT) in the acute as well as in the post-acute phase after stroke. In the acute phase, 91.67% (n=11/12) of the aphasic patients showed attentional deficits. While the percentage of errors in the ACL attention test of the ACL negatively correlated with the necessary number of repetitions of the instructions in the BiAS (p<.01) in the acute phase; the number of necessary repetitions in the BiAS was associated with the processing time of the R-SDT (p<.05) in the post-acute phase. In this study, a significantly positive relationship between language functions and attentional performance was observed in both, the acute and post-acute phase after stroke.