Clinical Practice and Cases in Emergency Medicine

Introduction: Bilingual aphasia is an atypical stroke presentation in the multilingual patient where an isolated aphasia occurs in one language while the other remains unaffected.

Case Report: A multilingual male presented to the emergency department with expressive aphasia to English but who was still able to speak fluently in French. Receptive English was preserved. While his National Institute of Health Stroke Scale score was technically zero, his pure aphasia component qualified him as an exception. He regained some repetitive English, so fibrinolyitic therapy was not initiated.

Conclusion: Bilingual aphasia is an indication for fibrinolysis given the impact that a pure aphasic stroke has on quality of life.