Aphasia can affect any age, but it is more common for it to affect adults, especially over 60 years of age. In Spain, more than 350,000 people suffer from aphasia and each year there are about 25,000 new cases, according to data from the Spanish Society of Neurology (SEN).
The aphasia is a language disorder produced as a consequence of a lesion or an alteration in the functioning of the parts of the brain responsible for expression, comprehension, reading and/or writing. Depending on the brain areas in which the lesion is located and the degree of these lesions, can have different types of severity and the patient will manifest different language problems.
Aphasia can have different types of severity and the patient will manifest different language problems.
Thus, some people with aphasia have word use problems or when building sentences, other people may have trouble understanding otherssome people may have both expression and comprehension problemsother people may have problems with reading and writing…
Aphasia is not a disease, it is a symptom of damage to the brain and causes can be various. However, the main causes of aphasia are:
- have suffered a stroke
- a head injury
- an infection (such as encephalitis)
- a brain tumor
- some type of neurodegenerative disease (such as Parkinson’s or some type of dementia, such as Alzheimer’s or frontotemporal dementia).
If the aphasia has been produced by a neurodegenerative disease, which in these cases is called progressive aphasia, the patient will progressively worsen as his disease progresses. Progressive aphasia is, therefore, the mode of presentation of various neurodegenerative diseases, and unlike other causes that produce aphasia suddenly, in these cases the symptoms begin gradually with language disorder being the most prominent symptom. Progressive aphasia is commonly associated with a variant of Alzheimer’s disease or with some types of frontotemporal dementia.
Frontotemporal dementia affects 0.2-0.3% of the population over 65 years of age.
The frontotemporal dementia is a group of disorders related to degeneration of the frontal or temporal lobes of the brain, including brain tissue related to speech and language. The primary progressive aphasia, semantic insanity and progressive agrammatic aphasia are the main subtypes of frontotemporal dementia that generate language problems, as indicated by the (SEN).
Among them, the most common is the primary progressive aphasia which is a neurodegenerative syndrome characterized by a progressive language impairment, while, initially, the rest of the cognitive functions are preserved. The usual age of onset is considered to be around 50 to 70 years.
In Spain it is estimated that the Frontotemporal dementia affects 0.2-0.3% of the population over 65 years of age, of which 20-40% would correspond to cases with primary progressive aphasia. His approach is symptomaticthat is, it is aimed at symptom control, since it lacks specific treatment and there is currently no evidence that any treatment can modify the course of the disease.
The Frontotemporal dementia is the third most common cause of dementia. neurodegenerative disease, after Alzheimer’s disease and dementia with Lewy bodies.