A 60-year-old man with mild aphasia after a stroke shows word-finding difficulties; the most appropriate course of action is to?

• A. Advise the client to wait for three more months in order to allow spontaneous recovery to take place
• B. Begin a treatment program designed to decrease dysfluencies in his speech
• C. Offer a treatment program designed to improve word-retrieval skills
• D. Encourage the client to increase his reading of information related to his profession in order to facilitate recall of professional terminology

Answer: (C)

Target word retrieval deficits after a stroke are best addressed with direct speech-language therapy focused on naming. For a mild post-stroke aphasia with word-finding difficulties, structured practice that targets lexical access—such as naming drills, semantic cueing, and related word-retrieval strategies—helps strengthen the neural pathways involved in retrieving words and improves functional communication. While some spontaneous recovery can occur over time, therapy provides purposeful, repeatable practice that can yield meaningful gains. Simply reducing dysfluencies targets fluency rather than the underlying retrieval problem, and increasing reading of professional material is a compensatory approach that doesn’t directly retrain word-finding abilities. Therefore offering a treatment program designed to improve word retrieval is the most appropriate course.