Speech blockage

Branconnier, R.J., Harto, N.E., Dessain, E.C., et at Speech blockage, memory impairment, and age a prospective comparison of amitriptyline and maprotiline. Psychopharmaeol. Bull. 23, 230-234, 1987. 

Three reports have referred to a type of difficulty in articulation described as speech blockage or dysarthria (62-64). The disturbance was described as a delay in thinking and speech, in which the patient has difficulty in conceptualizing or transferring the next logical thought into words. The effect resembles stammering. 

Schatzberg AF, Cole JO, Blumer DP. Speech blockage a tricyclic side effect. Am J Psychiatry 1978 135(5) 600-1. 

Speech blockage, so called, has been reported in a 34-year-old woman who had taken phenelzine 45 mg/day for 2 months (3). The adverse effect disappeared on withdrawal and did not recur when her depression was successfully treated with maprotiline 175 mg/day. 

Goldstein DM, Goldberg RL. Monoamine oxidase inhibitor-induced speech blockage. J Clin Psychiatry 1986 47(12) 604. 

So-called speech blockage has been reported with other antidepressants. 

A 54-year-old man developed a stammer and speech blockage while taking maprotiline 75 mg/day (12). It responded to a reduction in dose to 50 mg/day, reappeared with another challenge of 75 mg/day, and did not respond to physostigmine intramuscularly on two occasions. It did not occur when he took desipramine 50 mg/day. 

Sandyk R. Speech blockage induced by maprotiline. Am J Psychiatry 1986 143(3) 391-2. 

The Baylor doctors reported in 1967 a case of right vertebral artery blockage. The vertebral arteries are small, extremely important, and totally inaccessible blood vessels that travel from the heart, up the back of the spinal column, to the back of the brain. If one or both of these arteries become blocked you are in deep trouble. You lose speech, vision, and balance. Some victims of this type of blockage have "drop attacks." They drop to the floor just as if someone had cut their legs from under them. This happens without the slightest loss of consciousness. An inexperienced doctor will think the patient is faking because of the lack of mental change with the episode. It is a peculiar and mysterious medical phenomenon. 

Infarction (Stroke/ Ischemia) Acute (30 minutes -72 hours after onset) Hyperintense Chronic (after 2 weeks) Hypointense Paralysis visual disturbances speech problems gait difficulties altered level of consciousness Cerebral vascular occlusion/ blockage... 

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