Effectiveness of technologies in the treatment of post-stroke anomia: A systematic review

• ¹ Université Laval, Rehabilitation, Canada
• ² Université de Montréal, Rehabilitation, Canada

Problem: In recent years, use of technology in rehabilitation has been growing significantly and therapies delivered by computer, teletreatment and smart tablet are becoming more and more common. However, before proposing the implementation of these types of treatment on a larger scale, it is essential to measure their effectiveness and efficiency in significantly improving language capacities of people with aphasia but also their functional impact in everyday life. The aim of this literature review is to examine the effectiveness of specific intervention programs provided by technologies (i.e. computer, smart tablet and telerehabilitation) in the management of post-stroke anomia. Procedures and analyses: The PRISMA statement(1) for reporting systematic reviews and meta-analyses of studies that evaluate health care interventions was used as a guideline to conduct the present review. A systematic search of publications on PubMed and PsycInfo was conducted. Experimental studies designed to assess the effectiveness of an intervention delivered by a technology, namely computer, smart tablet or teletreatment, to specifically improve anomia in post-stroke participants were selected, without limitations as to the dates of publication. The main outcomes studied were improvement in naming skills and generalization to untreated items and daily communication. The Downs and Black checklist for randomised and non-randomised studies of health care interventions(2) was used by two reviewers (ML and JM) to conduct the methodological quality assessment. Results: A total of 20 studies were included in this review. Up to now, computer is by far the most popular technology, whereas only a few studies aimed at exploring the effectiveness of smart tablet or teletreatment. In some studies, technology was used as a therapy tool in a clinical setting, in the presence of the clinician, while in others, therapy with technology was self-administered at home, without the clinician. All studies confirmed the effectiveness of therapy provided by technology to improve naming of trained items. However, generalization to untrained items is unclear and assessment of generalization to daily communication is scarce. Conclusions: The results of this systematic review confirm that technology is a promising avenue in the management of post-stroke anomia. Self-administered therapies are particularly interesting since they allow increasing significantly the intensity and frequency of therapeutic activities, a factor that has been explicitly recognized as a positive determinant of the efficacy of language treatment(3). In future studies, ecological tasks aiming to evaluate therapy’s effectiveness on word retrieval in real-life situations should be added since the ultimate goal of improving anomia is for the participant to retrieve words more easily in his everyday life.