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People with semantic variant primary progressive aphasia (svPPA) present with a characteristic progressive breakdown of semantic knowledge. There are currently no pharmacological interventions to cure or slow svPPA, but promising behavioural approaches are increasingly reported. This article offers an overview of the last two decades of research into interventions to support language in people with svPPA including recommendations for clinical practice and future research based on the best available evidence. We offer a lay summary in English, Spanish and French for education and dissemination purposes. This paper discusses the implications of right- versus left-predominant atrophy in svPPA, which naming therapies offer the best outcomes and how to capitalise on preserved long-term memory systems. Current knowledge regarding the maintenance and generalisation of language therapy gains is described in detail along with the development of compensatory approaches and educational and support group programmes. It is concluded that there is evidence to support an integrative framework of treatment and care as best practice for svPPA. Such an approach should combine rehabilitation interventions addressing the language impairment, compensatory approaches to support activities of daily living and provision of education and support within the context of dementia.

Impaired verbal ‘phonological’ short-term memory is considered a cardinal feature of the logopenic variant of primary progressive aphasia (lv-PPA) and is assumed to underpin most of the language deficits in this syndrome. Clinically, examination of verbal short-term memory in individuals presenting with PPA is common practice and serves two objectives: (i) to help understand the possible mechanisms underlying the patient’s language profile and (ii) to help differentiate lv-PPA from other PPA variants or from other dementia syndromes. Distinction between lv-PPA and the non-fluent variant of PPA (nfv-PPA), however, can be especially challenging due to overlapping language profiles and comparable psychometric performances on verbal short-term memory tests. Here, we present case vignettes of the three PPA variants (lv-PPA, nfv-PPA, and the semantic variant (sv-PPA)) and typical Alzheimer’s disease (AD). These vignettes provide a detailed description of the short-term and working memory profiles typically found in these patients and highlight how speech output and language comprehension deficits across the PPA variants differentially interfere with verbal memory performance. We demonstrate that a combination of verbal short-term and working memory measures provides crucial information regarding the cognitive mechanisms underlying language disturbances in PPA. In addition, we propose that analogous visuospatial span tasks are essential for the assessment of PPA as they measure memory capacity without language contamination.