ABSTRACT
Objective To systematically review the efficacy of anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (A-tDCS) for relieving aphasia among stroke survivors.Methods The Chinese BioMedical Literature database,China National Knowledge Infrastructure,WanFang database,Chinese Scientific Journals full-text database,PubMed,Embase,MEDLINE and the Cochrane Library for clinical randomized and controlled trials were searched for reports about the use of A-tDCS in the treatment of aphasia after stroke.The resulting reports were retrieved manually and evaluated by two independent reviewers according to pre-set inclusion and exclusion criteria.The reports covered the period to November 2016.A meta-analysis was then conducted using RevMan software version 5.3.Results Seven studies covering 101 patients were selected for analysis.Meta-analysis showed that the average aphasia function score improved after A-tDCS significantly more than in the control group.Picture naming ability in stroke survivors with aphasia showed particular improvement.Only 11 patients in the 7 studies presented light adverse effects from AtDCS,always within the patients' tolerance range.Conclusion A-tDCS can significantly improve the speech of patients with aphasia after cerebral infarction.It is safe and easy to administer and is a rehabilitation technology worth popularizing and applying.Considering the limited number of articles,the conclusion remains to be further verified with randomized clinical trials of higher quality and a larger sample.