Access, referral, service provision and management of individuals with primary progressive aphasia: A survey of speech-language therapists in Italy.
Petronilla Battista, Marco Piccininni, Maxime Montembeault and 6 others
PMID 36636857WHAT IT FOUND
Italian speech-language therapists reported that 196 of 336 had never worked with people with primary progressive aphasia.
Among those who had, half said patients were referred within 2-3 years of symptom onset. Common assessment tools are borrowed from stroke aphasia.
Key findings
01Of 336 completed surveys, 196 (58.3%) indicated no experience working with people with primary progressive aphasia.
02Among therapists with PPA experience, half reported patients were referred for speech-language therapy within 2-3 years of symptom onset.
03Informal interviews and impairment-based interventions were common, while the PPA-specific SAND battery was never used by 65 of 140 respondents.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
Only 336 of an estimated 15 000 Italian speech-language therapists completed the survey, so it reflects a small, self-selected group. The main practice findings come from 140 therapists who had seen PPA, so therapists with no PPA experience cannot describe services they do not provide. It was an online survey, so therapists unfamiliar with technology may be missing, and some regions were not represented. It reports what therapists said they do, not what patients actually received or whether therapy worked.
Declared interests
One author reported outside the submitted work receiving partial funding for a self-initiated research project from Novartis Pharma and being awarded a research grant from the Center for Stroke Research Berlin. The other authors declared no conflicts.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that speech-language therapy is ineffective for primary progressive aphasia. This survey reports therapists' access, referral and practice patterns, not patient outcomes or treatment effectiveness.