The Effectiveness of Addition of Melodic Intonation Therapy on Language Ability in Stroke Patients with Broca's Aphasia: A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial

Objectives: To evaluate the effectiveness of adding melodic intonation therapy (MIT) to conventional therapy in improving language abilities in Thai-speaking stroke patients with Broca’s aphasia Study design: A pilot randomized controlled trial Setting: Three government hospitals in Thailand Subjects: Eleven stroke survivors diagnosed with Broca’s aphasia were enrolled in the study; eight completed the intervention and were analyzed. Methods: Participants were randomly assigned to receive either conventional speech therapy or conven-tional therapy combined with MIT. Participants received three hours of therapy a week for eight weeks (two 30-minute sessions with a speech-language pathologist (SLP) and four 30-minute home-based sessions conducted by a caregiver). A blinded SLP assessed outcomes using the Thai adaptation of the Western Aphasia Battery (WAB) at baseline and three months post-baseline. Non-parametric tests (Wilcoxon Signed-Rank and Mann-Whitney U tests) were used due to the small sample size. Results: The median age of participants was 56.5 years (IQR: 50.8-57.8) in the conventional group and 58.0 years (IQR: 33.5-67.5) in the conventional with MIT group. The median post-onset duration was longer in the conventional group (5.4 months, IQR: 2.4-9.8) compared to the MIT group (2.6 months, IQR: 1.0-4.6). Both groups showed improvements in fluency, comprehension, repetition, naming, and Aphasia Quotient (AQ). The MIT group demonstrated significantly greater gains in repetition and naming (p < 0.05). Conclusions: The findings of this pilot study suggest that adding MIT to conventional therapy may enhance repetition and naming abilities in Thai-speaking individuals with Broca’s aphasia. This finding supports the adaptation of MIT for tonal language contexts and highlights its potential in aphasia rehabilitation programs in Thailand. However, due to the limited sample size and statistical power, further research with larger samples is needed to confirm these findings.