About a third of strokes cause aphasia, or language loss, with profound consequences for the person’s social participation and quality of life. These problems may be mitigated by group social support. But this intervention is not available to all individuals. This study investigated whether it is feasible to deliver group social support to people with aphasia via a multi-user, virtual reality platform. It also explored the indicative effects of intervention and the costs. Intervention aimed to promote wellbeing and communicative success. It enabled participants to form new social connections and share experiences of living with aphasia. It comprised 14 sessions delivered over 6 months and was led by community based co-ordinators and volunteers. Feasibility measures comprised: recruitment and retention rates, compliance with intervention and assessment of treatment fidelity. Effects of intervention were explored using a waitlist randomised controlled design, with outcome measures of wellbeing, communication, social connectedness and quality of life. Two intervention groups were randomised to an immediate condition and two were randomised to a delayed condition. The main analysis explored scores on the measures between two time points, between which those in the immediate condition had received intervention, but those in the delayed group had not (yet). A comprehensive approach to economic data collection ensured that all costs of treatment delivery were recorded. Feasibility findings showed that the recruitment target was met (N = 34) and 85.3% (29/34) of participants completed intervention. All groups ran the 14 sessions as planned, and participants attended a mean of 11.4 sessions (s.d. 2.8), which was 81.6% of the intended dose. Fidelity checking showed minimal drift from the manualised intervention. No significant change was observed on any of the outcome measures, although the study was not powered to detect these. Costs varied across the four groups, from £7,483 - £12,562 British Pounds Sterling ($10,972 - $18,419 US dollars), depending on travel costs, the relative contributions of volunteers and the number of hardware loans that were needed. The results suggest that a larger trial of remote group support, using virtual reality, would be merited. However the treatment content and regime, and the selection of outcome measures should be reviewed before conducting the trial.

Trail registration: Study registered with ClinicalTrials.gov; Identifier: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/NCT03115268.

大约三分之一的中风会导致失语症或语言丧失，对人的社会参与和生活质量产生深远的影响。这些问题可以通过团体社会支持来缓解。但这种干预并不适用于所有个人。这项研究调查了通过多用户虚拟现实平台向失语症患者提供团体社会支持是否可行。它还探讨了干预的指示性效果和成本。干预旨在促进福祉和沟通成功。它使参与者能够形成新的社会联系并分享失语症的生活经历。它包括 14 场会议，历时 6 个月，由社区协调员和志愿者领导。可行性指标包括：招募率和保留率、干预的依从性以及治疗保真度的评估。使用等候名单随机对照设计探讨干预的效果，并采用幸福感、沟通、社会联系和生活质量的结果测量。两个干预组被随机分配到即时条件，两个干预组被随机分配到延迟条件。主要分析探讨了两个时间点之间的测量得分，在这两个时间点之间，处于即时状态的人接受了干预，但处于延迟状态的人（尚未）尚未接受干预。经济数据收集的综合方法确保记录所有治疗费用。可行性研究结果表明，招募目标得到满足（N = 34），85.3%（29/34）的参与者完成了干预。所有组均按计划进行 14 次疗程，参与者平均参加 11.4 次疗程（标准差 2.8），为预期剂量的 81.6%。保真度检查显示与手动干预的偏差最小。尽管该研究没有能力检测到这些结果，但没有观察到任何结果指标的显着变化。四组的费用各不相同，从 7,483 英镑到 12,562 英镑（10,972 美元到 18,419 美元）不等，具体取决于差旅费用、志愿者的相对贡献以及所需的硬件贷款数量。结果表明，值得利用虚拟现实进行更大规模的远程团体支持试验。然而，在进行试验之前应审查治疗内容和方案以及结果测量的选择。

试验注册：研究在 ClinicalTrials.gov 注册；标识符：https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/NCT03115268。