Neuropsychological Differences between Subcortical Vascular Dementia and Alzheimer Disease

J Korean Neurol Assoc > Volume 23(5); 2005 > Article

Journal of the Korean Neurological Association 2005;23(5): 614-620.

피질하 혈관성 치매와 알쯔하이머병에서 신경심리학적 평가의 차이

박경원, 박민정 천상명 김종국 차재관 김상호 김재우

동아대학교 의과대학 신경과학교실

Neuropsychological Differences between Subcortical Vascular Dementia and Alzheimer Disease

Kyung Won Park

Departments of Neurology, Dong-A University College of Medicine, Busan, Korea

Abstract

Background: The patterns of cognitive impairment in subcortical vascular dementia (SVaD) have been insufficiently investigated as compared with those in Alzheimer disease (AD). The aims of this study are to clarify the differences in the cognitive profiles between patients with SVaD and AD, and to differentiate between these two dementias using neuropsychological assessment.
Methods: Twenty-seven patients with SVaD, 45 patients with AD and 27 normal controls participated in this study. The dementia groups were all matched for age, education and the severity of dementia using the clinical dementia rating scale (CDR) and the global deterioration scale (GDS). All subjects were evaluated with a battery of detailed neuropsychological tests assessing attention, memory, language, visuospatial functions and frontal executive functioning.
Results: Both dementia patient groups demonstrated significant impairments in all cognitive domains including attention, verbal and visual memory, language function pertaining to naming, visuospatial and frontal executive functions compared with the control group. The patients with SVaD showed greater deficits in several items pertaining to attention and frontal executive functions than the AD patients. However, the AD group did not show any significant impairment in comparison with the SVaD group in any cognitive domain.
Conclusions: It was concluded that patients with SVaD show different patterns of neurocognitive profiles from those with AD in the items of frontal executive dysfunctions and that quantitative neuropsychological assessments can play an important role in the discrimination between SVaD and AD. KeyWords:Vascular dementia, Alzheimer's disease, Neuropsychology