Robey (1994) performed a meta-analysis of 21 studies of aphasia treatments that revealed several
important findings. The significant findings of this meta-analysis were summarised by Orange and
Kertesz (1998) into four points: “(1) the performance of individuals who receive language therapy in the
acute stage of recovery is nearly twice as large as the effect of spontaneous recovery alone; (2) language
therapy initiated after spontaneous recovery has a positive, albeit small, effect on language
performance; (3) a medium to large effect is present in comparisons of treated versus untreated
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individuals when therapy is begun in the acute phase and (4) a small to medium effect is present in
treated versus untreated groups when therapy is begun in the chronic stage of recovery (i.e. 6 – 12
months post onset),”.
Robey (1998) conducted a second meta-analysis of 55 articles to investigate the general effectiveness of
aphasia treatments across stages of recovery and to assess the different experimental and clinical
dimensions of aphasia treatment. Again, Robey found that the average effect for treated recovery was
nearly twice that for untreated recovery when treatment was begun in the acute phase. When
treatment was initiated in the acute phase, the average effect size, although smaller, was 1.68 times
greater than that of spontaneous recovery alone. When treatment was delayed until the chronic phase,
the average effect size for treated patients was smaller, but still exceeded that of non-treated patients.
In addition, the meta-analysis revealed that the more intensive the therapy, the greater the
improvement. Robey suggested that two hours of treatment per week should be the minimum length of
time for patients who can tolerate receiving intensive therapy. Finally, it was noted that large gains were
made by individuals with severe aphasia treated by speech-language pathologists (Robey 1998).