Marangolo 2018a.
| Methods | Randomised controlled cross‐over trial | |
| Participants | Country: Italy 12 participants; mean age (SD): 58 (8) years; time since stroke (SD): 22 (7) months; educational level: 13 (3) years; mean noun naming accuracy at baseline of Battery for the Analysis of Aphasic Disorders test (SD): 55% (20%) Inclusion criteria: native Italian speaker, premorbid right‐handedness, a single left‐hemispheric stroke at least 6 months before the investigation, mild non‐fluent aphasia with no articulatory difficulties, preserved basic comprehension skills (so as to allow them to be engaged in verbal exchanges with the therapist) Exclusion criteria: attentive or memory deficits that could have biased performance |
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| Interventions | Each participant underwent all of the following conditions (C‐tDCS with 2 mA on the right cerebellar cortex for 20 minutes once) with an intersession interval of unknown duration between each condition: ‐ right cathodal cerebellar tDCS for verb naming ‐ sham tDCS for verb naming ‐ right cathodal cerebellar tDCS for verb generation ‐ sham tDCS for verb generation |
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| Outcomes | Outcomes were recorded at baseline, at the end of intervention phase: ‐ accuracy in verb generation ‐ accuracy in verb naming ‐ vocal reaction time in verb generation ‐ vocal reaction time in verb naming |
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| Notes | ||
| Risk of bias | ||
| Bias | Authors' judgement | Support for judgement |
| Random sequence generation (selection bias) | Low risk | Quote: "All patients underwent the four experimental conditions whose order was randomized across participants [using a computer‐generated list of random numbers (Microsoft Excel)]" (Marangolo 2018b) |
| Allocation concealment (selection bias) | Low risk | Quote: "An independent experimenter provided the randomized allocation sequence through a computer generated randomization list." (Marangolo 2018b) |
| Blinding of participants and personnel (performance bias) Objective outcomes | Low risk | Quote: "To ensure the double‐blind procedure, both the experimenter and the patient were blinded regarding the stimulation condition, and the stimulator was turned on/off by another person." |
| Blinding of outcome assessment (detection bias) Objective outcomes | Low risk | Objective outcome measure |
| Incomplete outcome data (attrition bias) Objective outcomes | Unclear risk | Objective outcome measures: all participants apparently completed the study. No treatment withdrawals, no trial group changes and no major adverse events stated |
| Selective reporting (reporting bias) | Unclear risk | All outcomes listed in the 'Methods' section reported, no published protocol could be identified |
| Other bias | Low risk | No other bias identified |