The case study focused on a 40-year-old man visiting the metro Detroit area on business who showed signs of “dystextia,” a recently coined term for incoherent text messaging that can sometimes be confused with autocorrect garble<\/strong>. But in his case, the man saw nothing wrong with the garble.<\/p>\n The patient had no problem with a routine bedside test of his language abilities<\/strong> \u2013 including fluency of speech, reading, writing, comprehension and other factors. However, when asked to type a simple text message, he not only produced garble, but he was unable to see it as such.<\/p>\n Despite showing only slight facial asymmetry and no other symptoms, doctors determined the man had suffered an acute ischemic strok<\/strong>e, in which a clot or other blockage cuts off blood supply to part of the brain. Such strokes usually result in some form of physical impairment and can be fatal.<\/p>\n The report is will be presented March 19th during the annual scientific meeting of the American Academy of Neurology in San Diego.<\/p>\n Omran Kaskar, M.D., a neurologist at Henry Ford Hospital and lead author of the research, said it illustrates how dystextia can be the only symptom of stroke-related aphasia \u2013 a partial or sometimes total inability to form or understand language<\/strong>.<\/p>\n “Text messaging is a common form of communication with more than 75 billion texts sent each month,” Dr. Kaskar said. “Besides the time-honored tests we use to determine aphasia in diagnosing stroke, checking for dystextia may well become a vital tool in making such a determination.”<\/p>\n Dr. Kaskar added, “Because text messages are always time-stamped when they’re sent they may also help establish when the stroke symptoms were at least present or even when they began<\/strong>,” a key component in determining inclusion for IV thrombolytic therapy and or acute intervention.<\/p>\n The patient described in the Henry Ford research report had sent a message to his wife shortly after midnight the night before he went to the hospital. She described it as “disjointed, non-fluent, and incomprehensible.”<\/p>\n It said, “Oh baby your;” and was followed by “I am happy.” Two minutes later: “I am out of it, just woke up, can’t make sense, I can’t even type, call if ur awake, love you.”<\/p>\n The next day, after doctors found no visible neurological problems except a slight weakness on the right side of his face, and the patient had no trouble in handling the traditional bedside evaluation of language abilities<\/strong>, he was handed a smartphone and asked to type, “the doctor needs a new blackberry.”<\/p>\n Instead, he texted, “Tjhe Doctor nddds a new bb.” When asked if it was correct, the researchers reported, he did not recognize any typing errors<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Once it was determined that the man had suffered an acute ischemic stroke, the doctors concluded that checking for dystextia may become a vitally important diagnostic tool, particularly for patients who show no other clear symptoms<\/strong>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From the Henry Ford Health System press release via MedicalXpress: Difficulty or inability to write a coherent text message, even in patients who have no problem speaking, may become a… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10,6],"tags":[42,13,182],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11589"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11589"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11589\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11666,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11589\/revisions\/11666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Woman](\"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/images\/blogpics\/WomanwithCellphone.jpg\")
Difficulty or inability to write a coherent text message, even in patients who have no problem speaking, may become a “vital” tool in diagnosing a type of crippling stroke, <\/strong>according to new research at Henry Ford Hospital.<\/p>\n