Limitations in differentiating vascular dementia from Alzheimer's disease with brief cognitive tests

Arquivos de Neuro-Psiquiatria

Maria Niures P.s. Matioli²  Paulo Caramelli¹ 

[1] ,Lusíada University School of Medicine Department of Geriatrics Santos SP ,Brazil

关键词: Alzheimer's disease;    vascular dementia;    clock drawing test;    delayed recall;    diagnosis;    EXIT25;    neuropsychological tests;    verbal fluency;    doença de Alzheimer;    demência vascular;    teste do desenho do relógio;    memória de evocação;    diagnóstico;    EXIT25;    testes neuropsicológicos;    fluência verbal;   

DOI  :  10.1590/S0004-282X2010000200006

来源: SciELO

【 摘 要 】

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the diagnostic value of brief cognitive tests in differentiating vascular dementia (VaD) from Alzheimer's disease (AD). METHOD: Fifteen patients with mild VaD, 15 patients with mild probable AD and 30 healthy controls, matched for age, education and dementia severity, were submitted to the following cognitive tests: clock drawing (free drawing and copy), category and letter fluency, delayed recall test of figures and the EXIT 25 battery. RESULTS: VaD patients performed worse than AD patients in category fluency (p=0.014), letter fluency (p=0.043) and CLOX 2 (p=0.023), while AD cases performed worse than VaD patients in delayed recall (p=0.013). However, ROC curves for these tests displayed low sensitivity and specificity for the differential diagnosis between VaD and AD. CONCLUSION: Although the performance of VaD and AD patients was significantly different in some cognitive tests, the value of such instruments in differentiating VaD from AD proved to be very limited.

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