Comparative Effectiveness of In-Person and Virtual Picture-Naming Treatment for Poststroke Anomia.

Jewell, Courtney C.; Diedrichs, Victoria A.; Schwen Blackett, Deena; Durfee, Alexandra Zezinka; Harnish, Stacy M.

Purpose: In light of COVID-19, telepractice for speech therapy has been increasingly adopted. Telepractice promotes accessibility to therapy services for those in rural environments, lowers the frequency of missed appointments, and reduces the costs of rehabilitation. The efficacy of telepractice has been scarcely explored in the aphasia literature. Preliminary research has demonstrated comparable results of telepractice and in-person therapy for people with aphasia, but the current scope of research is insufficient to guide clinical practice. The present study examined whether the virtual administration of a picturenaming therapy paradigm was as effective as in-person administration. Method: The treatment effects of two similar clinical trials, one completed inperson (n = 13) and one completed virtually (n = 13), are compared. Participants were adults with chronic (> 6 months) poststroke aphasia. Both clinical trials administered Cued Picture-Naming Therapy 4 days a week for 2 weeks (eight treatment sessions). Treatment outcomes were analyzed using Tau-U effect sizes and Mann--Whitney U tests. Results: Weighted Tau-U averages showed an advantage of telepractice over in-person treatment in the acquisition effects of trained words, with participants demonstrating a very large effect (0.84, p < .01) following telepractice and a large effect (0.75, p < .01) following in-person treatment. Both telepractice and in-person rehabilitation demonstrated significant treatment effects and were not significantly different from each other per Mann--Whitney U independentsamples t tests. Conclusions: The present study demonstrated that telepractice of a picturenaming paradigm is as effective as in-person treatment administration. This justifies the use of telepractice to overcome accessibility and cost barriers to speech therapy administration and justifies taking patient preference into account. Future research should explore the efficacy of telepractice for treatments that promote greater generalizability to functional communication. Supplemental Material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.27641031

ANOMIA; T-test (Statistics); RESEARCH funding; REHABILITATION; TREATMENT effectiveness; RETROSPECTIVE studies; MANN Whitney U Test; DESCRIPTIVE statistics; TELEMEDICINE; SOUND recordings; MEDICAL records; ACQUISITION of data; STATISTICS; STROKE; COMPARATIVE studies; TREATMENT effect heterogeneity; VIDEO recording; DISEASE complications

American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 2025, Vol 34, Issue 1, p218

1058-0360

Academic Journal

10.1044/2024_AJSLP-24-00172