ABSTRACT
In this paper we report on clinical linguistic applications of several versions of the Bilingual Aphasia Test [BAT] and the Persian Aphasia Battery [PAB] developed to assess patterns of recovery and language impairments in monolingual and bilingual aphasics with different clinical histories living in Iran. The participants are adult monolingual native speakers of Persian or polyglot speakers whose second or third language is one or two of the local languages, local dialects and/or English or German among the educated multilingual population. The recovery pattern and level of language impairments of each patient were assessed based on his or her clinical linguistic profile as well as analysis of the connected speech samples. The linguistic profiles of monolinguals and different recovery patterns of the bilingual patients support the idea that language-specific impairments correspond to the structural properties of Persian language. The results also support incidence of selective impairments of different language skills in patients with the same lesion site. As an incidence of double dissociation the data indicated that Broca's and Wernicke's aphasics behaved differently. The mean syntactic comprehension scores of Broca's patients were four times higher than that of the Wernicke's patients [4.25 vs. 0]. On the contrary Wernicke's patients mean MLU was three times higher than that of Broca's aphasics [6.9 vs. 2.30]. The clinical linguistic evidence from a heterogeneous group of case studies using the BAT and the PAB assessing Persian aphasics support dissociation of impairment between different levels of language, spoken and written skills. The data from patients with different lesion sites could explain the idea of under specification of functional anatomy of the classical brain-language model
ABSTRACT
Thalassemia major is a hereditary anemia that becomes blood transfusion dependent. Iron overload consequence leads to multiple organ dysfunction and endocrinopathy. So deferoxamine [desferal] is used for chelation therapy. The aim of this study was to evaluate the growth rate of these patients and its correlation with endocrine complications and determine the role of secondary iron overload in these situations. This cross-sectional study was performed for a year [2010] on 280 patients [aged 3.5- 56 years] who received blood transfusion and chelation therapy at Amirkola Thalassemia Center. After basic evaluations, determination of height standard deviation, they were divided by serum ferritin level into two groups [good and poorly controlled]. They were evaluated for hypothyroidism, diabetes mellitus, hypoparathyroidism and hypogonadism. Next, data were analyzed. A p <0.05 was considered significant. From 280 patients with mean age of 19.6 +/- 8.5 years, 161 [57.5%] cases were female, short stature [<-2 SDS] was present in 90 cases [32.1%]. Their mean height was 151.4 +/- 17.3 cm. 162 cases [57.9%] had endocrinopathy. There was a relationship between short stature and hypoparathyroidism [p= 0.009] and hypogonadism [p= 0.005] and also diabetes mellitus [p= 0.003]; but no relationship was found between short stature and hypothyroidism [p=1.000] and serum ferritin level [p=0.091]. According to higher prevalence of hypoparathyroidism, hypogonadism and diabetes mellitus in short statured thalassemic patients, screening should be done for such disorders with more sensitivity in these patients