Characteristics of Aphasia in Ischemic Stroke Patients at Dr. Mahar Mardjono National Brain Center Hospital Indonesia in 2021

Highlights: 1. To author’s knowledge, this study is the first study done in National Brain Center Hospital In Jakarta2. No similar studies have been done during the pandemic era3. This study can add additional data to further studies about aphasia in comparison with post pandemic era   Abstract Global aphasia, sensory transcortical aphasia, motor transcortical aphasia, motor aphasia, sensory aphasia, conduction aphasia and anomic aphasia can occur in ischemic stroke. There are different locations of lesions in each type of aphasia. There has been an increase in incidence and mortality of stroke patients during the COVID-19 pandemic. Before the pandemic, global aphasia was the most common type of aphasia. This study was conducted to determine the type of aphasia, clinical and radiological features, and also management of aphasia in ischemic stroke during the pandemic. This research is a descriptive study with a cross sectional approach. Sampling was done by total sampling technique. The research sample was ischemic stroke subjects with aphasia diagnosed from January 1, 2021 - December 31, 2021 at the National Brain Center Hospital Prof. Dr. dr. Mahar Mardjono Jakarta. Statistical analysis was done using IBM SPSS Statistics for Mac, Version 25.0 (IBM Corp., Armonk, N.Y., USA). There were 162 aphasic subjects with ischemic stroke. Age range was 34 – 87 years. Most subjects were male (59.9%), aged 55-65 years (37.0%). Hypertension (90.1%), diabetes mellitus (50.0%), and dyslipidemia (75.9%) were the dominant risk factors. The most common type of aphasia is global aphasia (43.8%) and motoric aphasia. (33,3%). The parietal lobe was the dominant location of global aphasia (38 subjects) and motoric aphasia (47 subjects). The therapy given to aphasic subjects with a history of ischemic stroke includes speech therapy (85.2%), antiplatelet therapy (98.1%), anticoagulants (19.1%), rTPA (1.2%), and neuroprotectors (3.0 %). In conclusion, in ischemic stroke subjects with aphasia at the National Brain Center Hospital during the pandemic, global aphasia was found to be the most common with the dominant global aphasia lesion location in the parietal lobe.