title: [Mild cognitive impairment. Survey of attitudes of specialists and general physicians. mild].
abstract: Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) refers to persons who are slightly cognitively impaired for age but do not meet the criteria for dementia. MCI has been related to a pre-dementia stage of Alzheimer's disease (AD). However, other possible diagnoses such as cerebro-vascular disease, frontotemporal dementia or normal aging have been considered. Diagnosis, etiology and conversion to dementia are a source of ambiguity in MCI. The aim was to evaluate the opinion of experts on dementia and of general practitioners concerning MCI. A total of 24 experts from Argentina and Brazil (16 neurologists and 8 psychiatrists) and 30 general practitioners agreed to reply to a questionnaire on MCI (adapted from Dubois inventory, 2003). Of these, 92% of experts considered MCI as an ambiguous entity, not necessarily as a "pre-dementia" stage; 63% confirmed a tendency to worsen over the time and 83% of experts decided to initiate treatment using cholinesterase inhibitors, memantine and vitamin E. The opinion on MCI was that a priori it is not only an Alzheimer disease pre-dementia stage, but most of them consider the treatment against AD. MCI is a heterogeneous entity that should be classified as an open category and making it necessary to standardize definitions and design diagnosis guides to better understand Alzheimer disease pre-dementia stage.
authors.affiliation: LLaboratorio de Investigación de la Memoria del Hospital A. Zubizarreta (GCBA), Buenos Aires, Argentina. 2 siren@cemic.edu.ar
authors.forename: Cecilia M
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Serrano
authors.forename: Ricardo F
authors.initials: RF
authors.lastname: Allegri
authors.forename: Paulo
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Caramelli
authors.forename: Fernando E
authors.initials: FE
authors.lastname: Taragano
authors.forename: Luis
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Camera
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging / Q000473:pathology / Q000523:psychology*; D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000473:pathology / Q000628:therapy; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000473:pathology / Q000628:therapy; D015140:Dementia, Vascular / Q000473:pathology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010819:Physician's Role; D011364:Professional Practice; D012720:Severity of Illness Index