Limitations in differentiating vascular dementia from Alzheimer's disease with brief cognitive tests.
OBJECTIVE
To investigate the diagnostic value of brief cognitive tests in differentiating vascular dementia (VaD) from Alzheimer's disease (AD).


METHODS
Fifteen patients with mild VaD, 15 patients with mild probable AD and 30 healthy controls, matched for age, education and dementia severity, were submitted to the following cognitive tests: clock drawing (free drawing and copy), category and letter fluency, delayed recall test of figures and the EXIT 25 battery.


RESULTS
VaD patients performed worse than AD patients in category fluency (p=0.014), letter fluency (p=0.043) and CLOX 2 (p=0.023), while AD cases performed worse than VaD patients in delayed recall (p=0.013). However, ROC curves for these tests displayed low sensitivity and specificity for the differential diagnosis between VaD and AD.


CONCLUSIONS
Although the performance of VaD and AD patients was significantly different in some cognitive tests, the value of such instruments in differentiating VaD from AD proved to be very limited.
Matioli
Maria Niures P S
MN
Department of Geriatrics, Lusíada University School of Medicine, Santos, SP, Brazil.
Caramelli
Paulo
P
D000368:Aged; D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000175:diagnosis*; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D015140:Dementia, Vascular / Q000175:diagnosis*; D003937:Diagnosis, Differential; D004522:Educational Status; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D012720:Severity of Illness Index