[Frontal lobe hematoma associated with transcortical motor aphasia: case report]

An 81-year-old woman with left medial frontal lobe hematoma, which involved the supplementary motor area, is reported. She was right-handed and was initially mute for several hours after the onset. On admission, she exhibited mild paresis of the right lower extremity. Her spontaneous speech was sparse and not fluent, but her articulation and auditory comprehension were normal and repetition was good. She exhibited excellent performance in the confrontation naming task, but showed difficulty in recalling words from a given category during the word fluency task. On the basis of these clinical features, she was diagnosed as having transcortical motor aphasia. Our case may corroborate previous findings that the left medial frontal lobe is important in word fluency but not in confrontation naming.