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Michael D. O'Brien, MD, FRCP

Arch Neurol. 1988;45(7):797-798.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

Whether the vascular contribution to dementia is overdiagnosed or underdiagnosed depends on your starting point of view. Alzheimer published his articles describing the disease that now bears his name in 1902 and 1907. The classification of dementia into senile and presenile should have become extinct at the same time, because it is determined by age alone and has no pathologic or causal connotation. Indeed, dementia is a sign or symptom, but not a diagnosis. Together with this meaningless classification went the notion that "atherosclerotic dementia" and "senile dementia" were virtually interchangeable terms, despite the fact that Alzheimer pointed out that his disease did not have a vascular basis. If anyone still holds this view, he or she would grossly overdiagnose vascular dementia.

In 1974, Hachinski et al¹ introduced the term multi-infarct dementia and suggested that vascular disease only caused dementia by a series of relatively large infarcts, enough to . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
From the Department of Neurology, Guy's Hospital, London.

Footnotes
Accepted for publication June 12, 1987.

Reprints not available.

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