Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) for improving aphasia in adults with aphasia after stroke.

CONCLUSIONS: Currently there is no evidence of the effectiveness of tDCS (anodal tDCS, cathodal tDCS and Dual-tDCS) versus control (sham tDCS) for improving functional communication in people with aphasia after stroke (low quality of evidence). However, there is limited evidence that tDCS may improve naming performance in naming nouns (moderate quality of evidence), but not verbs (very low quality of evidence) at the end of the intervention period and possibly also at follow-up. Further methodologically rigorous RCTs with adequate sample size calculation are needed in this area to determine the effectiveness of this intervention. Data on functional communication and on adverse events should routinely be collected and presented in further publications as well as data at follow-up. Further study on the relationship between language/aphasia and cognition may be required, and improved cognitive assessments for patients with aphasia developed, prior to the use of tDCS to directly target cognition in aphasia. Authors should state total values at post-intervention as well as their corresponding change scores with standard deviations. PMID: 31111960 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
Source: Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews - Category: General Medicine Authors: Tags: Cochrane Database Syst Rev Source Type: research