Animal naming as an effective screening tool for aphasia in brain tumor patients

Background It is crucial to detect aphasia preoperatively and preserve language function intraoperatively in brain tumor surgery. As most existing language screening instruments were originally designed and validated in stroke populations, their sensitivity for detecting brain tumor-related aphasia remains uncertain.Aims We evaluated the sensitivity of various language subtests from the short-form Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination in Chinese version (sfBDAE-C) in patients with gliomas. We aimed to identify the subtests most indicative of language dysfunction to optimize aphasia screening in brain tumor patients.Methods & Procedures 74 patients with left-hemisphere gliomas were enrolled in this study, including 53 diagnosed with aphasia and 21 non-aphasic patients. Aphasia was jointly diagnosed by a physician experienced in the field of language and a speech-language pathologist. Preoperative linguistic evaluation was conducted using the sfBDAE-C. Logistic regression analyses were performed to identify subtests predictive of aphasia based on relative deficit percentages in each subtest.Outcomes & Results Univariate logistic regression identified 17 subtests with statistical significance (p < 0.05). Multivariate logistic regression further selected animal naming (OR = 1.09, p = 0.002), automatized language (sequences), and reading comprehension of sentences and paragraphs as optimal predictors for the aphasia detection model. ROC analysis demonstrated robust discriminatory power of animal naming for detecting aphasia (AUC = 92.7%).Conclusions Animal naming, a semantic verbal fluency test, is identified as a promising, test for preoperative detection of aphasia in patients with brain tumors localized within language-eloquent areas.