Intervention
- There is limited research on the treatment of apraxia (Quintana, 2008). This may be because clients do not complain about the impairment (possibly due to aphasia), clients are not aware of the impairment (the apraxia may involve their non-dominant extremity), or health practitioners have incorrect beliefs such as the client will spontaneously recover or that apraxia will have little effect on a client's life (Quintana, 2008).
- Interventions that do exist for clients with apraxia can focus on either 1) attempting to decrease the apraxic impairment, or 2) improving activity performance despite the apraxic impairment (Gillen, 2009).
- In terms of decreasing the apraxic impairment, "the available research does not support the sometimes assumed relationship that decreasing the severity of apraxia will automatically result in improved daily function" (Gillen, 2009, p. 123). Gillen concludes that case studies of interventions such as gesture practice do not result in carry-over as generalizations to untrained actions do not occur (2009).
- van Heugten makes an important statement to guide treatment of clients living with apraxia:
"Recovery from apraxia is not a realistic goal for therapy. Instead, the aim of rehabilitation should be to help the patient develop new patterns of cognitive activity through internal or external compensatory mechanisms, or through adaptation of the tasks or environment" (2001, p.179).
The following pages review interventions that attempt to follow this guide: