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Background and aim: Cryotherapy has long been introduced as a common method for preventing and reducing edema caused by traumatic injuries. Many studies have been conducted regarding other effects of cold such as its effects on muscle strength which provided controversial results over the past decades. The aim of this study is to investigate whether cold is capable of changing the muscle strength.

Materials and methods: The research was conducted on 30 volunteers with the mean age of 22 years. In a standard situation, the volunteers were asked to make their maximum grip force. Cold was applied over their anterior forearm using an ice pack for 15 minutes. The maximum grip force was measured before and within 1 to 120 minutes after cold application.

Results:The strength of the anterior forearm muscles decreased rapidly after cold application. The maximum reduction of muscle strength, in average 18% was observed after 10 minutes. This was followed by a gradual increase of grip force. After 120 minutes the force was increased to about 5% above the baseline force that was before cold application.

Conclusion: Regarding the slight increase in the muscle strength and its long delay, cryotherapy of muscles cannot be considered as a practical method in rehabilitation of patients. However, this method would be of great importance for athletes.

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Background and Aim: Impairment of noun retrieval is common among aphasic patients, but some of previous studies represent differences between noun retrieval ability of various aphasia syndromes. Current study investigates and compares the picture naming ability of 4 patients with fluent and non-fluent aphasia. 

Materials and Methods: Present study investigated the naming ability of 2 fluent and 2 non-fluent aphasic patients with oral picture naming test. This test contains line drawing of 109 nouns. Patients were asked to name each picture with a single word. Responses were classified according to Philadelphia Naming Test scoring system as correct and semantic, formal, mixed, non-word, unrelated and others error (no response, description/circumlocution, miscellaneous error). Then, the data were investigated in terms of descriptive statistics and analyzed by Mann-Whitney U test.

Results: The score of non-fluent aphasics was more than fluent ones. The percentage of semantic errors in fluent group and no responses among non-fluent patients were more than the other types. Despite of personal differences, all error types were found in responses of patients. The difference between score and error types in fluent and non-fluent patients was not significant (p .05).

Conclusion: This scoring system can define a variety of word retrieval errors. The fluent aphasics have more noun retrieval problems than non-fluent patients. Although, there are differences between two groups, but error type in picture naming is not a precise factor for distinguish between various aphasia syndromes and there is similarity in impaired underling mechanisms and naming behavior of them.