Atuação fonoaudiológica com o idoso afásico: intervenção e abordagens

Abstract

Aphasia is a communication disorder that most frequently affects elderly patients with some complications, such as stroke. The individual with aphasia needs multi-disciplinary rehabilitation in order to reduce the effects of the disorder and restore communicative functions. Objective: The general objective of this work is to carry out a literature review of the narrative type, showing how speech therapy can be effi-cient in the treatment of aphasia in the elderly. Specifically it was pretended to de-scribe how therapeutic approach and how intervention techniques are linked in im-proving cognition and / or language. Methodology: this is a bibliographic review of the narrative type, with a qualitative approach, with no time frame. Results: Of the ten studies stimulated, two analyzed the risk factors of the elderly for aphasia, four studies indicated therapeutic intervention, another four studies pointed out the ef-fectiveness of speech-language intervention. It was found that aphasia is a lan-guage disorder, its main cause is stroke and patients at greatest risk are elderly men with systemic arterial hypertension and heart disease. This disorder is broadly divid-ed into two groups: reception and expression. The theoretical approaches defined as linguistic, traditional and cognitive were approached. Such approaches underpin speech therapy practice, however a comparison was not made to define the best or most efficient. Conclusion: It is up to the speech therapist to apply methods and techniques that best suit his conception. It is of fundamental importance the partici-pation of the Speech-Language Pathologist both in the diagnosis process and in the process of rehabilitation and readaptation of people in this condition.