Background: The rehabilitation of aphasic patients encompasses several areas of intervention and rehabilitation including medical treatment, physical, occupational therapy and psychological counseling. The central part of rehabilitation program is language therapy.
In this study hyperbaric oxygen (HBO) was used as an adjuvant to the existing therapeutic management for patients with acute or completed stroke hoping that it will be beneficial for patients.
Aim of the work: is to evaluate effect of hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) as a recent tool in management of aphasia in order to highlight this therapeutic technique.
Patients and methods: This study was applied on 30 patients with age ranging from 40 - 60 years, from January 2018 to September 2021, diagnosed with ischemic stroke, based on objective and clinical measures recruited from the outpatient Phoniatric clinic at Ain Shams University Hospitals, and Kobree el kobba military hospital.
The patients were distributed randomly into two groups. Group I, receiving only language therapy sessions. Group II, receiving both language therapy sessions and adjuvant HBO therapy.
Results: Comparing pre and post therapy results, there was statistically significant difference between before and after language therapy, and statistically significant difference between before and after language and hyperbaric oxygen therapy.
There were statistically significant differences and higher means/standard deviations among patients who received language therapy with HBO therapy than those who received language therapy only.
Conclusion: The present study showed that hyperbaric oxygen is effective in treatment of aphasia after stroke not only the language therapy. So, it can be considered one of the protocol of treatment in stroke patients with aphasia and Language problems.