Intensive therapy isn’t necessarily best for treating the loss of language and communication immediately after stroke, according to Australian researchers.

Unlike physical and motor skill rehabilitation, the effort to recover lost language caused by aphasia should be seen as a marathon, report the authors of a study published in the International Journal of Stroke.

The Very Early Rehabilitation for Speech, or VERSE, study at Edith Cowan University followed 246 Australians and New Zealanders with post-stroke aphasia.

“We found that when we provided early aphasia therapy, people had a massive increase in their ability to communicate at 12 and 26 weeks after their stroke. They could talk better and had less difficulty finding and using the right words,” said Erin Godecke, Ph.D., associate professor at ECU’s School of Medical and Health Sciences. “Importantly, though, we also found that if we provided around 10 hours of therapy per week versus nearly 23 hours a week, the results weren’t any different. We didn’t see any harm, but we didn’t see any benefit.” 

Goedke expects the findings will lead to changes in service delivery, parsing out services over a longer period rather than in the first six to eight weeks as has been typical.

About one-third of the world’s 17 million stroke patients experience aphasia.

Godecke said the difficulty level or intensity of aphasia therapy needs to be tailored to what an individual can tolerate, with breaks built in that allow the brain to consolidate new learning.