A case of mixed transcortical aphasia following drug overdose.

A case is presented of a 35‐year‐old, right‐handed man who exhibited a range of clinical features indicative of mixed transcortical aphasia subsequent to a heroin overdose. The findings of a comprehensive language evaluation, neurological assessment and neuroradiological examination are described and discussed. The major feature of the patient's language disorder was the relative loss of the voluntary aspects of language (eg spontaneous speech; the ability to initiate or actively participate in conversations) compared to the preservation of the automatic, non‐volitional components of language (eg repetition; rules of syntactic agreement; completion phenomena; and verbal automatisms). It was concluded that the features of mixed transcortical aphasia demonstrated were most likely the result of anoxic changes in the arterial borderzone occurring secondary to the drug overdose. 1986 Royal College of Speech & Language Therapists