Bruce Willis ended up acting for aphasia. – REFRESHER

Bruce Willis’ family announced on an Instagram post that the 67-year-old Hollywood actor was forced to end his career. In a joint contribution on the social network, his relatives wrote that his health condition was behind the unexpected decision. Doctors have only recently diagnosed him with aphasia, a loss of the ability to communicate. According to clinical speech therapist Zsolt Cséfalvay of Comenius University, who has been dealing with aphatics for over thirty years, most cases of aphasia occur in stroke, popularly known as defeats. However, according to him, Bruce Willis suffers from another, rarer and, unfortunately, significantly more severe form of aphasia. This is called primary progressive aphasia (PPA). In this neurodegenerative disease, relatively inconspicuous speech disorders are only the first symptom and the patient’s condition, according to a speech therapy professor, will worsen over time as the disease spreads to the brain. neurodegenerative disease will soon affect the actor’s cognitive abilities. “PPA is similar to Alzheimer’s dementia, which also first manifests itself in memory deficits. It is like the first signal that the pathological protein has started working in the brain. ”According to MUDr. Stanislav Šutovský’s PPA usually ends in mutism, severe dementia syndrome and akinesia, while the average survival of patients since the onset of the first symptoms of the disease is only 5 years. Zsolt Cséfalvay assumes that the legendary actor seems to be worse off than most media predicts, and that his condition will continue to deteriorate. “As a result of the pathological process, neurons gradually die out, damaging the cerebral cortex and the subcortical areas of the brain. At first it is very discreet, but the process is almost irreversible. There is little chance of improvement in the neurodegenerative form of aphasia. ”Less severe types of aphasia are extremely widespread. In a stroke, aphasia occurs due to a focal disorder of the cerebral cortex when a blood vessel in the brain becomes clogged or narrowed. Sharon Stone and Emily Clarke, for example, suffered from aphasia after the stroke. In the population, according to the expert, vascular aphasia occurs in about a third of patients with stroke. We often use the term “speech loss” in colloquial speech. Due to the extent and area of ​​brain damage, the diagnosis may manifest itself in a reduced ability or even a complete loss of communication, written expression or understanding of the language of others. Vascular (vascular) aphasia is very often a concomitant manifestation of neurological disorders and also occurs in patients with Alzheimer’s disease. Causes of aphasia The risk of vascular aphasia increases with age. In addition to heart attack and stroke, it is also caused by a head injury. Other causes include brain tumor or infection. Vascular aphasia, which has no effect on the patient’s intelligence, manifests itself especially in speech difficulties. Patients often have difficulty expressing an idea, finding the right word, and tend to use nonsensical words and phrases. During the conversation, the words can also be repeated or omitted. In its methodological manual, the Ministry of Health places aphasia in a broader group of brain damage diagnoses, including alexia, which means loss of reading, agrafia, loss of ability to write, and agnosis, which means loss of cognition, and calculus, which refers to loss of ability to count.

Aphasia, which limits communication skills, occurs as a result of damage to the areas of the brain responsible for forming one’s own speech and understanding the speech of others. According to the Ministry of Health, aphasia reflects the disintegration of the entire human psyche and violates all speech functions. Anna Hrnčiarová from the Ministry of Health says that there are no preventive measures that could prevent aphasia. As a preventive measure, it is only possible to fight against the development of primary diseases that cause aphasia, brain trauma or brain damage during sports, transport or work. Types of aphasia Aphasia is divided into several types depending on the extent and location of the damage. In the case of the so-called expressive aphasia, one understands other people, and even though he knows what he wants to say, he has problems with expressions. A patient suffering from sensory aphasia can form relatively long sentences, but its expression is incomprehensible. Uses non-existent words, repeats them, gets lost or gets tangled up. A relatively mild form is the so-called anomic aphasia, in which a person has problems naming objects and finding suitable words. At the other end of the scale is global aphasia, in which speech center damage is so severe that the patient completely loses communication. If aphasia is suspected, doctors can detect it using neurological tests and confirm it by magnetic resonance imaging. Early diagnosis and reasonably rapid initiation of effective broad-spectrum therapy, according to the ministry, are prerequisites for improving communication in most aphasics and their inclusion in the primary social environment and family, while in some cases returning to the work environment is also possible. Typology of aphasia. Source: aphasia.org Living with aphasia and reeducation If aphasia was caused by a brain tumor, the patient’s condition can be improved by eliminating it. There are no cures for aphasia today. After diagnosis, doctors especially recommend speech therapies, which take place individually or in groups. Based on statistical data, the Ministry writes that in adult patients with aphatics, as a result of the therapy, “speech completely or significantly improved in 88-90% and in 10-12% the result of reeducation was only insignificant”. When managing the consequences of aphasia, it is advisable to work not only with the patient but also with his surroundings. Visits by special speech therapists (aphasiologists) are an important part of reeducation, as speech therapy therapy is, according to Zsolt Cséfalvay, extremely effective in vascular aphasia. Aphatists often help each other with pens and paper or tablets during conversations with loved ones. The American Aphasia Association recommends aphasic family members to communicate slowly and patiently and use clear and simple words.