dementia

how do you determine what stage of  vascular dementia you are in?

[Dr. Kokil Mathur]

Hi
Thanks for writing to the forum!
I am not sure what you mean by stage—clinically or in CT scans?

“In the CDR 0.5-1 stage, VaD patients demonstrated increased reading difficulty, loss of insight, apathy, and greater impairment in executive function compared with delayed and recognition memory. Unique distinguishing features for VaD in the CDR 2-3 stage included higher Geriatric Depression Scale scores, lower Barthel scores, gait apraxia and parkinsonism.” Refer: http://content.karger.com/ProdukteDB/produkte.asp?Aktion=ShowPDF&ArtikelNr=178755&Ausgabe=242123&ProduktNr=224226&filename=178755.pdf

“In small vessel disease the incidence peaks between the 4th and the 7th decades of life and 80% will have a history of hypertension. Patients develop progressive cognitive, motor and behavioural signs and symptoms. A significant proportion of them also develop affective symptoms. These changes occur over a period of 5-10 years. If the frontal lobes are affected, which is often the case, patients may present as apathetic or abulic. This is often accompanied by problems with attention, orientation and urinary incontinence.

As already stated, small vessel disease and focal lesions often overlap, so these two patterns may be evident in the same individual concurrently.” Refer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-infarct_dementia


Hope this helps! Please let me know if there is any thing else and do keep me posted. Take care!