Acquired childhood aphasia: A clinicoradiological study of 11 stroke patients

Abstract

Abstract We describe 11 cases of acquired childhood aphasia due to stroke, and study the relation between their clinical features and lesion localizations demonstrated by CT or MRI scan. All children were examined in the acute stage (within the first 30 days post-onset). There was a predominance of Broca's type of aphasia (non-fluent aphasia with poor naming, good auditory comprehension and poor repetition). All children had single left hemispheric lesions except a left-handed girl with a right hemispheric infarction. Most (nine of 11) children had subcortical lesions, either pure (four) or associated with cortical damage (five). Although most cases were in accordance with the clinico-radiological correlations usually observed in adults, two cases were atypical. All children made good recovery from aphasia; most of them (eight of 11) did so within the first 3 months and the others within the first year. Reading and writing disorders were common in the acute stage (five of six cases), and outlasted clinical aphasia in two cases. The stereotyped clinical picture of childhood aphasia due to stroke is probably related to the predominance of subcortical lesion sites in this age group, and not to a specific effect of age.