Effect of bilingualism on aphasia recovery

Abstract

ABSTRACT Background The severity of post-stroke aphasia has also been reported to be less in bilingual patients compared to their monolingual counterparts Aim To analyze the effect of bilingualism on aphasia recovery during the early post-stroke phase. Methods Bengali version of Western Aphasia Battery (WAB)was used for language assessment. It was administered during the first week and 90–100 days post-stroke. Severity assessment was done by calculating aphasia quotient (AQ). We enrolled 155 monolingual and 53 bilingual patients with aphasia, of whom 120 monolingual and 43 bilingual participants were followed up. Results The probability of recovering was higher for bilinguals than in monolingual patients. When the location of stroke was analyzed, the percentage of patients recovering in the “medium” class was higher for bilingual than monolinguals by fair margins for sub-cortical and mixed cortico-subcortical strokes With respect to gender, bilingual patients present better recovery than monolinguals in both genders, but especially in males. The mean improvement of AQ in low age (p = 0.22), high volume (p = 0.05), and low AQ (p = 0.17) groups were found to be fairly higher for bilinguals in contrast to monolinguals. Conclusions This is, to our knowledge, the first study reporting differences in aphasia recovery between bilingual and monolingual subjects. Bilingual participants experienced better aphasia recovery following a stroke when viewed through the lens of different variables.