[Clinical and paraclinical symptoms in Dementia]

Dementia is basically the disease of old people which is usually caused by a primary degenerative lesion or by a structural disease in the brain. In terms of etiology, dementia is associated with reversible and irreversible causes. Determination of the underlying causes of dementia may facilitate its treatment and prognosis. The purpose of this study is to evaluate clinical and paraclinical symptoms of dementia as well as to determine the most common causes. This is a cross sectional descriptive study on 100 patients with dementia who referred to Shahrivar 17[th] Hospital in Mashhad. First, the patients who were diagnosed as being infected by dementia were evaluated according to DSM-IV criteria. They were also enrolled in history taking and physical examinations as well as paraclinical managements like EEG, CT Scan and MRI. The obtained data were then recorded down in the questionnaires. 36% of the patients were females and 64% were males. Of this population, 43% had Alzheimer Disease [AD], 40% had Vascular Dementia [VaD], 9% Parkinson disease [PD] and 8% had other types of dementia while there was no case of Ferontotemporal dementia [FTD]. HTN, DM and Hyperlipidemia were found to have a fully significant effect on VaD. 100% with the history of TIA and 88% with the history of CVA had VaD which was meaningful, too. 55% of the VaD patients were identified with Gait disorder and 65% with Incontinence which is ststistically significant. Based on the results of MRI and CT Scan, 100% of the AD patients, 47.5% of the VaD patients and 88.9% of the PD patients were identified with cortical atrophy. In addition, it was found that hypocampus atrophy was present in 53.5% of the patients with AD and in 15% of the patients with VaD. In 90% of the VaD patients, hypodense foci was observed which is statistically significant, too. As the findings of the study suggest, the results of CT Scan and MRI was notably related to the type of dementia. Thus, it seems that using these two techniques can determine the existence of dementia in the early stages which can help with improving the quality and quantity of life in these patients. According to the frequency rate of VaD in our patients, it seems that the lack of or poor control of the risk factors like HTN, DM and hyperlipidemia can lead to the high frequency rate of vascular dementia