Childhood-acquired aphasia: A case report

Abstract

Childhood-acquired aphasia or Childhood-acquired language disorder is a neurological disorder caused by damage of the brain areas related to some aspects of language production and language processing. As a result, there are problems in understanding the speech, which interferes with what the speaker intends to communicate. There are also impaired speaking and writing skills. When language processing area is impaired then communication is significantly affected and behavioral problems arise reflecting on inadequate language performance, below that could be expected based on children’s age level. The aim of this paper is to report a case of Childhood-acquired aphasia or Childhoodacquired language disorder in a four-year-old boy. 4-year-old male Muslim child from an urban environment with lower economic education. Referred by a child neurologist with complaints of being easily irritated, expressed, especially with his mother’s movement, irritability, episodic tantrums and fights with siblings. Speaks less than in periods prior to the onset of symptoms. He produces meaningless speech; he is unable to understand all speech during communication, which has been happening for a period of 30 days. Also has a history of seizure for 1 month. The child was born by normal vaginal delivery without any complications during antenatal, natal and post-natal period. His milestones of development in all domains were age appropriate and he had no history of mental illness in the family. His socialization as well as the relationship with friends was good before the seizure occurrence. The linguistic assessment revealed that the child cannot understand the speaker’s simple and complex sentences, as well as the pragmatic linguistic representations necessary for successful functional communication in various social contexts. These facts reveal that there is difficulty in the development of receptive language. There were abnormalities in his EEG report. Childhood-acquired language disorder or Childhood-Expressive language assessment revealed a-grammatic speech with a breakdown of sentence structure and with the omission or misuse of grammatical morphemes. There is spelling error in alphabet\letter and, also in words that meant disorder in the written expression. Acquired aphasia was assigned to the boy managed with bio psychosocial approach. Follow up after 3 months revealed gradual decrease of behavioural problems with significant improvement in language development. This case revealed that Childhood-acquired aphasia or Childhood-acquired language disorder sometimes present with seizure disorder and behaviour disturbances of children. Meticulous history and index of suspicion are able to provide evaluation of child with linguistic disorders.