Language deficit in non-dominant hemisphere stroke patients

Background: Despite the long history of research favoring the left hemisphere is dominant for language processing in most right-handed subjects. There is accumulating evidence that the right hemisphere contributes to language.Aim: evaluate language deficits in right hemisphere stroke survivors so they will have the opportunity to be tested for deficits and offered compensatory strategies.Patient and methods: comparative cross-sectional design, right-handed patients from 3 hospitals and a physiotherapy Centre in Iraq, aged (38-75 years), each had either right or left hemispheric stroke, patients with bilateral hemispheric stroke and who are not sufficiently clinically stable to be approached were excluded, and control group of neurologically healthy participant. we used the quick aphasia test for both patients and control groups, data collected between April 2022 and February 2023.Results: we included 40 patients, 20 had right hemispheric stroke and 20 had left hemispheric stroke, and 20 neurologically healthy control group. mean age for patients was 58.2 years, aphasia was found in 30% of right hemispheric stroke patients and 35 % of left hemispheric stroke patients. Sentence comprehension was the most often impaired task for both left hemispheric stroke patients with mean score 7.19(SD = 2.36) and right hemispheric stroke patients with mean score of 8.07 (SD = 1.64). the difference in mean for word comprehension between right hemispheric stroke patients 9.58 (SD = 0.83) and control group (10 SD 0) was statistically significant with p value (0.03). grammatical construction was impaired more for the left hemispheric stroke patients with mean score 8.95(SD = 1.49) than the right hemispheric stroke patients with mean score 9.41 (SD = 0.6). conclusion: right hemisphere has important role in language which can be affected by stroke so it can be vital to be looked for so adaptations can be done for better life for those patients.