APHASIA IN AFRICAN-AMERICANS AND CAUCASIANS - SEVERITY, IMPROVEMENT, AND RATE OF IMPROVEMENT

We compared initial severity, amount of improvement, and rate of impro vement of aphasia in African-Americans and Caucasians. Study patients were aphasic subsequent to a first, left hemisphere, thromboembolic in farct, and all were entered in a 44-week treatment trial designed to p rovide 6-8 h of treatment each week between 4 and 48 weeks post-onset. There was no significant difference between African-Americans and Cau casians in severity of aphasia on the Porch Index of Communicative Abi lity, a word fluency measure, or the Token Test prior to the initiatio n of treatment at 4 weeks post-onset. At 48 weeks post-onset, African- Americans performed significantly lower on the Porch Index of Communic ative Ability Gestural and Graphic modality scores. Both African-Ameri can and Caucasian aphasic patients displayed significant improvement i n aphasia during the 44-week treatment trial, and there were no signif icant differences between groups in the amount or rate of improvement. Thus, our samples of African-American and Caucasian aphasic patients displayed essentially the same initial severity, amount of improvement , and rate of improvement of aphasia during the first year post-onset.