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Abstract

Introduction: One of the most common clusters of manifestations of cognitive impairment associated to vascular dementia is related to the handling of language. Regarding rehabilitation approaches, spaced repetition based techniques offer advantages in cases on mild and severe cognitive deterioration because they allow the automation in the use of Word families of key importance in daily communication for patients with severe impairment in cognitive processing. Objective: To analyze the effectiveness of spaced repetition based rehabilitation of speech language in vascular dementia. Method: 2 patients diagnosed of mild vascular dementia and 1 patient diagnosed of severe vascular dementia were submitted to rehabilitation using spaced repetition exercises with vocabulary organized into Word families related to basic actions and events from their daily life. Each patient was stimulated with three groups of twenty words each and supported by graphic material. Measures in the naming of words when confronted with the item were made pre-rehabilitation and post-rehabilitation monthly over a period of 8 months. Results: All patients improved in denomination of chosen items and kept that improvement during periodical assessments over the 8 month periodical though a slight declination in performance was observed from the 6th month. Case 1 named 8, 5 and 7 words at baseline. After rehabilitation, performance improved to 16, 12 and 15 and declined to 13, 11 and 12 after the 8 month period. Baseline in Case 2 was 6, 8 and 9 words and improved to 15, 18 and 13 after rehabilitation with a decline to 13,15 and 10 after the 8 month period. Case 3 performed 2, 4 and 7 at baseline and improved to 10, 13 and 11 after rehabilitation with a decline to 10, 11 and 9 after the 8 month period. Conclusion: Spaced repetition based exercises is a useful asset when dealing with vocabulary re-acquisition in patients affected by vascular dementia and offers a reasonable prognosis over time despite neurodegenerative factors.

Biography

David Gallego is graduated in speech therapy from Valladolid University, Spain, with 10 years of experience in the speech and therapy rehabilitation field related to brain damage (BD). He recently moved to Dublin, Ireland but keeps collaborating with hospital Miguel Domínguez from Galicia, Spain where he worked as head of the speech therapy service for the last 4 years. He also collaborates with the Speech Therapy School from Valladolid University and is collegiated in the Speech Therapy Association of Castilla León.

Email: oro3es@hotmail.com