Abstract
In order to investigate to what extent aphasic patients can improve through language therapy, a long term follow-up is necessary. For this purpose two groups of aphasic patients were chosen for the study: (A) Five patients who received therapy for more than ten months, but whose therapy began a year or more after onset which occurred at least three or more years ago; (B) Eight patients who have received therapy for more than three years since onset.
Their recovery processes were evaluated by their total scores as well as their modality scores on SLTA. the main results are as follows:
1) Every case showed marked improvement for the first 12 months of the therapy regardless of the time elapsed since onset.
2) In group (B), although every case showed a stagnant period starting around the twelfth month of the therapy, they all still showed some improvement which was slower than the improvement seen within the first year after onset.
From these findings the following might be suggested:
1) It seems effective to continue language therapy at least for three years after onset.
2) Regardless of the time passed since onset, language therapy is advisable for every aphasic patient.
