Language disorders in Landau-Kleffner syndrome

In the present long-term study, we analyzed language disorders in four patients with Landau-Kleffner syndrome. Their common first symptoms were disability in understanding spoken words, followed by inarticulation and a decreased amount of speech. All patients showed auditory verbal agnosia to some degree at some stage of their illness. However, one patient showed typical sensory aphasia as the first symptom, and another patient showed nonverbal auditory agnosia followed by pure word deafness. Thus, patients with Landau-Kleffner syndrome show sequential and sometimes hierarchical language disorders beginning with sensory aphasia, followed by auditory agnosia, and finally word deafness during their disease process. During long-term follow-up (20 to 30 years), all patients showed marked recovery in language without any intellectual handicap, but with some disability in spoken language, auditory verbal perception, and a discrepancy between Wechsler Verbal and Performance IQ scores.