Prelingual auditory verbal agnosia, A rare condition

Violeta Necula, Cristina Mirela Stamate, Krishna Luchoo, Marcel Cosgarea

Indian Journal of Otology 2017 23(1):46-48

Auditory agnosia, agnosia for speech is a rare condition, caused mostly by stroke, in adults, while in children it is often a sequel of herpes simplex encephalitis or is associated with epilepsy, in Landau–Kleffner syndrome. This article presents a rare case of verbal auditory agnosia as a result of meningoencephalitis, caused probably by herpes simplex virus. The patient's developed encephalitis at the age of 1 year and 4 months. After her recovery, the family noticed the absence of language development. She was initially diagnosed with profound hearing loss, and the hearing aids did not help her. The speech therapy developed her lip-reading skills with a hard-to-understand pronunciation. Later, audiometry showed a nearly normal peripheral auditory system and magnetic resonance imaging revealed the characteristic brain lesions in both the temporal lobes, explaining the patient's evolution. Assessment of children with delayed speech development must consider the central hearing disorders as a differential diagnosis.

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