Dysphasia Treatment in Las Vegas

Table of Contents

1 What is dysphasia?
2 What are the causes of dysphasia?
3 What is a dysphagia soft diet?
4 What high-risk foods should you avoid with dysphagia?
5 Different types of dysphasia
- 5.1 Receptive types
- 5.2 Global type
6 Symptoms of dysphasia
7 Who is most at risk from dysphasia?
8 Dysphasia Treatment options
9 Expressive dysphasia treatment
10 Dysphasia treatment timeline
11 Treatment methods for dysphasia with SLPs
- 11.1 Impairment-based therapies
- 11.2 Communication-based therapies
12 Difference between aphasia and dysphasia
13 Dysphasia treatment in Las Vegas

What is dysphasia?

The condition that affects an individual’s ability to make or understand spoken language gets called dysphasia. It could also cause problems in writing, reading, or gesturing impairments.

Other problems could get mistaken with dysphasia, such as;

Dysarthria, difficulty speaking caused by brain damage, and inability to control the muscles used in speech.
Speech disorder, problems creating or forming the speech sounds needed to communicate with other s.
Dysphagia (a swallowing disorder)

Dysphasia is a language disorder. When parts of the brain responsible for making thoughts are damaged and unable to work properly. So people suffering from dysphasia often have problems with verbal communication.

What are the causes of dysphasia?

The common causes of dysphasia include:

Stroke
Head injuries
Tumors
Infections
Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s
Migraines
Seizures

A few causes of dysphasia like seizures, migraines, and TIAs (transient ischemic attacks) lead to temporary damage. However, the language ability can be restored after the attack is over.

What is a dysphagia soft diet?

You will require a dysphagia soft diet if you have difficulty chewing or swallowing. This can happen for various causes, including oral discomfort, ill-fitting dentures, or missing teeth. In addition, children who are developing their teeth may have difficulty eating or swallowing.

Foods that are soft and moist may be included in a dysphagia-soft diet. If you want to add more moisture to your foods, include broth, melted butter, soft margarine, gravy, sauces, milk, or juice. Foods that are too hard or too wet may have to be diced, minced, lightly shaved, or mashed.

Diced foods should be sliced into pieces no larger than 1 cm (approximately 12 inches) for adults and no smaller than 8 mm for youngsters.

What high-risk foods should you avoid with dysphagia?

Mixed-consistency foods can be challenging for someone with dysphagia because they have more than one texture or consistency. Some cereals don’t mix well with milk, minced meat with thin gravy, and soup-soaked bread.
Husked foods – e.g., granary bread, other multigrain bread, sweetcorn, etc. Husked foods are the outer covering of fruit or seeds.
Celery, green beans, melted cheese, pineapple, or anything with a fibrous or stringy texture.
Tomatoes, baked beans, peas, grapes, and peas, for example, have thick skins, seeds, or pips.
Bread, biscuits, crackers, crisps, or pie crusts that are crunchy and crumbly.
Nuts, seeds, nuts, and tough meats are hard foods.
A Speech and Language Therapist may recommend bread as safe on a case-by-case basis.

Different types of dysphasia

Dysphasia comes in different types. Each type damages one particular part of the brain.

Expressive types

The expressive type often affects language and speech output. People who suffer from this type might understand what others say, but they have difficulty producing speech. These people often are aware of their problems.

Broca’s dysphasia

Broca’s dysphasia also gets called Broca’s aphasia. It’s one of the most common types of dysphasia. This type was named Broca because it affects the brain’s Broca’s area. People suffering from Broca’s dysphasia face the greatest difficulty creating words and sentences. They might speak with difficulty or not speak at all. These groups’ comprehension ability is better than speaking.

Transcortical dysphasia

Transcortical dysphasia also gets called:

Transcortical aphasia, and
Isolation dysphasia

Transcortical aphasia affects the nerve fibers. They have the responsibility to carry information between the:

Brain’s language centers.
The tone of voice, emotion, and facial expressions areas.

Transcortical dysphasia comes in three subcategories as follows:

mixed transcortical dysphasia
transcortical motor dysphasia
transcortical sensory dysphasia

Receptive types

The Receptive types affect language comprehension in patients. People suffering from Receptive dysphasia can speak, but no one understands them. The bad point is they don’t know people can not understand them.

Wernicke’s dysphasia

Wernicke’s aphasia is another name for Wernicke’s dysphasia. It involves damage to Wernicke’s area of the brain. Wernicke’s area takes the responsibility to understand the meaning of words and language. You might find them difficult to understand due to the use of meaningless or unrelated words.

Anomic dysphasia

A milder type of dysphasia often also gets called anomic aphasia. Individuals who suffer from Anomic dysphasia have difficulty remembering words or names. They tend to pause, use a different or general word, or use gestures to convey what they mean.

Conduction dysphasia

This type also gets called conduction aphasia, which is among the rarest types of dysphasia. Individuals suffering from conduction dysphasia understand and produce speech but may have difficulty repeating it.

Global type

Global aphasia Global dysphasia is due to extensive damage to the brain language center. Individuals suffering from it have extreme difficulty expressing and understanding language.

Symptoms of dysphasia

The Symptoms of dysphasia depend on the severity and location of brain damage. They could appear differently.

The speaking symptoms include but not limited to:

speaking well but without meaning.
Using meaningless words
Replacing sounds or words
Grammatical errors
Confusing words
Removing small words and phrases such as prepositions and articles.
Speaking with difficulty or slowly
Difficulty finding words

Comprehension symptoms include but not limited to:

Not knowing of the errors.
Having trouble understanding fast speech
Wrong answers to simple questions.
Need more time to understand speech
Difficulty to understand the complicated grammar

Individuals suffering from dysphasia could have difficulty with writing and reading as well.

Who is most at risk from dysphasia?

Dysphasia causes mentioned above can lead to dysphasia. However, the risk factors leading to the problem include but not limited to:

A sedentary lifestyle
Diabetes
High cholesterol
Heart disease
High blood pressure

Dysphasia Treatment options

In the treatment of dysphasia, exercises to strengthen language and speech are usually used. These exercises are:

Exercises to distinguish sounds
Pronunciation exercises
Listening exercises, processing information, and recall
Vocabulary exercises
Semantic exercises
Morpho-syntactic exercises

Expressive dysphasia treatment

Working with a Speech-Language Pathologist is the best way to treat expressive dysphasia. The experts know the type of dysphasia and which treatment plan works best for you.

Speech therapy exercises are an inevitable part of speech rehabilitation. As they help heal the brain and improve communication, they have become the most important part of the treatment process.

Expressive dysphasia affects people differently. This is because all brains are wired differently. For instance, it might affect one person’s verbal speech production while the other one might suffer from writing problems. This is the most important reason why expressive dysphasia patients need to work with an expert. It is particularly important at the beginning of the treatment process.

The SLP might assign you tasks to complete at home to keep the brain stimulated for recovery. The therapist might prescribe medicine, but it depends on your conditions and the severity of the damage. Some apps help the therapist to work effectively with the patients to progress the rehabilitation plan.

Dysphasia treatment timeline

Improvement in treatment of dysphagia takes time. It requires help from SLP and family both together. It might take a long time or the results will be achieved after a period of time. However, the timeline and progress is up to the patient’s conditions, severity of damage and the progress achieved after the practice sessions.

Treatment methods for dysphasia with SLPs

The treatment methods come mainly in two groups:

Impairment-based therapies

Therapists will focus on tasks that allow patients to understand and speak better as far as possible. The SLP could prescribe training sessions at home with apps or computer-based programs. He/she could give assignments to complete at home to continue the learning process. The caregiver might provide professionally guided assistance to extend the treatment sessions.

The use of a virtual therapist speaking from a computer monitor is another example of experimental treatment.

Communication-based therapies

This approach helps people in sending messages and feelings with alternative means of communicating. Compensatory strategies are also involved in this type of therapy. SLPs encourage patients to use any remaining language ability that is successful in conveying messages.

Difference between aphasia and dysphasia

Dealing with dysphasia, you might hear the word aphasia. Aphasia is the full loss of language ability, but dysphasia stands for partial loss of language. However, the term aphasia is used to refer to both conditions, so don’t get confused. In the page, we have used the term dysphasia as readers and clients are more familiar with it.