Phonemic fluency improved after inhibitory transcranial magnetic stimulation in a case of chronic aphasia.
Angela Rossetti, Calogero Malfitano, Chiara Malloggi and 3 others
PMID 30300167WHAT IT FOUND
A woman with chronic aphasia improved phonemic fluency by 10 words two months after inhibitory rTMS over right Broca's homologue.
Naming, semantic fluency, and Stroop did not improve. This single case cannot show the treatment works.
Key findings
01Phonemic fluency improved by 10 words two months after rTMS, beyond the MRD value of 8.20.
02Denomination and semantic fluency did not show significant change, and Stroop performance did not show a clear trend toward improvement.
03No adverse events were recorded.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The paper reports an individual case, not a controlled trial. The minimal real difference thresholds were taken from previous literature, not measured in this patient. The Stroop test had no available minimal real difference. No ethics committee reviewed the case. The intervention was described as unproven. The paper says no other functions were tested. No adverse events were recorded, but a single patient cannot establish safety.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that inhibitory rTMS improves chronic aphasia or broad speech-language outcomes. This was a single case, and only phonemic fluency changed; naming, semantic fluency, and Stroop did not improve.