Abstract
INTRODUCTION: About 35,000 people in Germany suffered from stroke-related aphasia in 2019. One of the most frequent manifestations of aphasia are word finding disorders. In times of the COVID-19 pandemic, the temporary approval of video therapy enables the maintenance of speech therapy treatment. This leads to the necessity to investigate the effectiveness of screen-to-screen therapy via a video conferencing system compared to conventional face-to-face therapy of adult aphasia patients. METHODS: For this scoping review, a literature search in the databases Cochrane, Pubmed and Web of Science was conducted for the period February 2010 to 2020. We included German- and English-language studies comparing the effectiveness of a classic face-to-face therapy with a screen-to-screen therapy of adults with aphasia. The studies were selected using the PRISMA flowchart. RESULTS: A total of five studies were identified. Both face-to-face therapy and screen-to-screen therapy showed significant improvements in naming performance in an Italian crossover study, a Canadian randomized study and a quasi-randomized study conducted in the UK. No improvements were found for both forms of intervention in an Israeli crossover study. In a German comparative study, significant improvements in naming performance were found for face-to-face therapy, but the results did not differ significantly from the screen-to-screen therapy intervention group. DISCUSSION: In all included studies, screen-to-screen therapy and face-to-face therapy had a comparable effectiveness on naming performance. The results demonstrate the feasibility of a screen-to-screen therapy under everyday conditions. However, it is possible that this form of therapy cannot always be implemented. Barriers to screen-to-screen therapy can be the use of technologies and restrictions in the visual field due to a neglect. One limitation of the scoping review was that only the naming performance was considered as an outcome, another was the small number of studies included. CONCLUSION: For many patients screen-to-screen therapy is currently the only possibility to receive speech therapy treatment. Therefore it is a positive aspect that screen-to-screen therapy is as effective as face-to-face therapy. Screen-to-screen therapy can provide expanded access to health care and professional expertise in health services. In this way, speech therapy care during the COVID-19 pandemic can be largely maintained. Further research is needed on evidence-based treatment methods and user-oriented apps for video therapy.