Neuropsychological Differences between Subcortical Vascular Dementia and Alzheimer Disease

Park, Kyung Won; Park, Min Jeong; Cheon, Sang Myung; Kim, Jong Kuk; Cha, Jae Kwan; Kim, Sang Ho; Kim, Jae Woo

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.