The unbridged gap between clinical diagnosis and contemporary research on aphasia: A short discussion on the validity and clinical utility of taxonomic categories.
Even if the traditional aphasia classification is continuously questioned by many scholars, it remains widely accepted among clinicians and included in textbooks as the gold standard. The present study aims to investigate the validity and clinical utility of this taxonomy. For this purpose, 65 left-hemisphere stroke patients were assessed and classified with respect to aphasia type based on performance on a Greek adaptation of the Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination. MRI and/or CT scans were obtained for each patient and lesions were identified and coded according to location. Results indicate that 26.5% of the aphasic profiles remained unclassified. More importantly, we failed to confirm the traditional lesion-to-syndrome correspondence for 63.5% of patients. Overall, our findings elucidate crucial vulnerabilities of the neo-associationist classification, and further support a deficit-rather than a syndrome-based approach. The issue of unclassifiable patients is also discussed.
Department of Neurology, School of Medicine, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. Electronic address: dkasselimis@gmail.com.
Dimitrios S
DS
Kasselimis
Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, University of Crete, Greece.
Panagiotis G
PG
Simos
Department of Radiology, Therapeutic Center of Athens "Lefkos Stavros", Greece.
Christos
C
Peppas
Department of Neurology, School of Medicine, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece.
Ioannis
I
Evdokimidis
Department of Neurology, School of Medicine, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece.
Constantin
C
Potagas
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D001037:Aphasia / Q000145:classification* / Q000150:complications / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000473:pathology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D020521:Stroke / Q000150:complications / Q000473:pathology; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed; D055815:Young Adult
Aphasia; Aphasia classification; Disconnection syndromes; Localization; Stroke