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In aphasia, a person may be unable to comprehend or unable to formulate language because of damage to specific brain regions. The major causes are stroke and head trauma; prevalence is hard to determine but aphasia due to stroke is estimated to be 0.1–0.4% in the Global North. Aphasia can also be the result of brain tumors, epilepsy, autoimmune neurological diseases, brain infections, or neurodegenerative diseases.
A communication disorder is any disorder that affects an individual's ability to comprehend, detect, or apply language and speech to engage in dialogue effectively with others. This also encompasses deficiencies in verbal and non-verbal communication styles. The delays and disorders can range from simple sound substitution to the inability to understand or use one's native language. This article covers subjects such as diagnosis, the DSM-IV, the DSM-V, and examples like sensory impairments, aphasia, learning disabilities, and speech disorders.
Shortness of breath (SOB), also medically known as dyspnea or dyspnoea, is an uncomfortable feeling of not being able to breathe well enough. The American Thoracic Society defines it as "a subjective experience of breathing discomfort that consists of qualitatively distinct sensations that vary in intensity", and recommends evaluating dyspnea by assessing the intensity of its distinct sensations, the degree of distress and discomfort involved, and its burden or impact on the patient's activities of daily living. Distinct sensations include effort/work to breathe, chest tightness or pain, and "air hunger". The tripod position is often assumed to be a sign.
Wernicke's area, also called Wernicke's speech area, is one of the two parts of the cerebral cortex that are linked to speech, the other being Broca's area. It is involved in the comprehension of written and spoken language, in contrast to Broca's area, which is primarily involved in the production of language. It is traditionally thought to reside in Brodmann area 22, which is located in the superior temporal gyrus in the dominant cerebral hemisphere, which is the left hemisphere in about 95% of right-handed individuals and 70% of left-handed individuals.
Stroke is a medical condition in which poor blood flow to the brain causes cell death. There are two main types of stroke: ischemic, due to lack of blood flow, and hemorrhagic, due to bleeding. Both cause parts of the brain to stop functioning properly.
Dysarthria is a speech sound disorder resulting from neurological injury of the motor component of the motor–speech system and is characterized by poor articulation of phonemes. In other words, it is a condition in which problems effectively occur with the muscles that help produce speech, often making it very difficult to pronounce words. It is unrelated to problems with understanding language, although a person can have both. Any of the speech subsystems can be affected, leading to impairments in intelligibility, audibility, naturalness, and efficiency of vocal communication. Dysarthria that has progressed to a total loss of speech is referred to as anarthria. The term dysarthria is from Neo-Latin, dys- "dysfunctional, impaired" and arthr- "joint, vocal articulation".
The AVPU scale is a system by which a health care professional can measure and record a patient's level of consciousness. It is mostly used in emergency medicine protocols, and within first aid.
Gait abnormality is a deviation from normal walking (gait). Watching a patient walk is an important part of the neurological examination. Normal gait requires that many systems, including strength, sensation and coordination, function in an integrated fashion. Many common problems in the nervous system and musculoskeletal system will show up in the way a person walks.
Vital signs are a group of the four to six most crucial medical signs that indicate the status of the body's vital (life-sustaining) functions. These measurements are taken to help assess the general physical health of a person, give clues to possible diseases, and show progress toward recovery. The normal ranges for a person's vital signs vary with age, weight, sex, and overall health.
Dysmetria is a lack of coordination of movement typified by the undershoot or overshoot of intended position with the hand, arm, leg, or eye. It is a type of ataxia. It can also include an inability to judge distance or scale.
Intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH), also known as hemorrhagic stroke, is a sudden bleeding into the tissues of the brain, into its ventricles, or into both. An ICH is a type of bleeding within the skull and one kind of stroke. Symptoms can vary dramatically depending on the severity, acuity, and location (anatomically) but can include headache, one-sided weakness, numbness, tingling, or paralysis, speech problems, vision or hearing problems, memory loss, attention problems, coordination problems, balance problems, dizziness or lightheadedness or vertigo, nausea/vomiting, seizures, decreased level of consciousness or total loss of consciousness, neck stiffness, and fever.
Abnormal posturing is an involuntary flexion or extension of the arms and legs, indicating severe brain injury. It occurs when one set of muscles becomes incapacitated while the opposing set is not, and an external stimulus such as pain causes the working set of muscles to contract. The posturing may also occur without a stimulus. Since posturing is an important indicator of the amount of damage that has occurred to the brain, it is used by medical professionals to measure the severity of a coma with the Glasgow Coma Scale and the Pediatric Glasgow Coma Scale.
Chronic progressive external ophthalmoplegia (CPEO) is a type of eye disorder characterized by slowly progressive inability to move the eyes and eyebrows. It is often the only feature of mitochondrial disease, in which case the term CPEO may be given as the diagnosis. In other people suffering from mitochondrial disease, CPEO occurs as part of a syndrome involving more than one part of the body, such as Kearns–Sayre syndrome. Occasionally CPEO may be caused by conditions other than mitochondrial diseases.
Cortical deafness is a rare form of sensorineural hearing loss caused by damage to the primary auditory cortex. Cortical deafness is an auditory disorder where the patient is unable to hear sounds but has no apparent damage to the structures of the ear. It has been argued to be as the combination of auditory verbal agnosia and auditory agnosia. Patients with cortical deafness cannot hear any sounds, that is, they are not aware of sounds including non-speech, voices, and speech sounds. Although patients appear and feel completely deaf, they can still exhibit some reflex responses such as turning their head towards a loud sound.
Acute megakaryoblastic leukemia (AMKL) is life-threatening leukemia in which malignant megakaryoblasts proliferate abnormally and injure various tissues. Megakaryoblasts are the most immature precursor cells in a platelet-forming lineage; they mature to promegakaryocytes and, ultimately, megakaryocytes which cells shed membrane-enclosed particles, i.e. platelets, into the circulation. Platelets are critical for the normal clotting of blood. While malignant megakaryoblasts usually are the predominant proliferating and tissue-damaging cells, their similarly malignant descendants, promegakaryocytes and megakaryocytes, are variable contributors to the malignancy.
In medicine, pronator drift refers to a pathologic sign seen during a neurological examination. Jean Alexandre Barré is credited with having first described it; thus it is sometimes known as the Barré test or sign. A positive result indicates palsy. This sign can appear due to an upper motor neuron lesion or various other conditions which include palsy as a symptom.
The National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale, or NIH Stroke Scale (NIHSS), is a tool used by healthcare providers to objectively quantify the impairment caused by a stroke and aid planning post-acute care disposition, though was intended to assess differences in interventions in clinical trials. The NIHSS was designed for the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) Recombinant Tissue Plasminogen Activator (rt-PA) for Acute Stroke Trial and was first published by neurologist Dr. Patrick Lyden and colleagues in 2001. Prior to the NIHSS, during the late 1980s, several stroke-deficit rating scales were in use.
Babinski–Nageotte syndrome is an alternating brainstem syndrome. It occurs when there is damage to the dorsolateral or posterior lateral medulla oblongata, likely syphilitic in origin. Hence it is also called the alternating medulla oblongata syndrome.
FAST is an acronym used as a mnemonic to help detect and enhance responsiveness to the needs of a person having a stroke. The acronym stands for Facial drooping, Arm weakness, Speech difficulties and Time to call emergency services.
The Los Angeles Prehospital Stroke Screen is a method of identifying potential stroke patients in a pre-hospital setting.
References
- ↑ Hurwitz AS, Brice JH, Overby BA, Evenson KR (2005). "Directed use of the Cincinnati Prehospital Stroke Scale by laypersons". Prehosp Emerg Care. 9 (3): 292–6. doi:10.1080/10903120590962283. PMID 16147478.
- ↑ Kothari, R.; Hall, K.; Brott, T.; Broderick, J. (1997-10-01). "Early stroke recognition: developing an out-of-hospital NIH Stroke Scale". Academic Emergency Medicine. 4 (10): 986–990. doi: 10.1111/j.1553-2712.1997.tb03665.x . ISSN 1069-6563. PMID 9332632.
- ↑ American Heart Association (2011). Advanced Cardiovascular Life Support Provider Manual. USA: First American Heart Association Printing. p. 137. ISBN 978-1-61669-010-6.