Dementia and Cognitive Impairment: Clinical Diagnosis and Classification

• Autor(a) principal: Santos,Catarina
• Data de Publicação: 2010
• Outros Autores: Lunet,Nuno
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://scielo.pt/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0871-34132010000300003
• topic: dementia; mild cognitive impairment; diagnosis; classification

Dementia is an increasingly prevalent chronic condition, with a profound social impact. In the last few decades, emerging basic science concepts revealed the existence of various forms of dementia, with distinct neuropathological mechanisms. The two most representative subtypes of dementia in individuals over 65 years old are Alzheimer´s Disease and Vascular Dementia, with an increasingly recognized phenotypic overlap between these two entities. Mild Cognitive Impairment is an evolving operational concept, aiming to describe a transitional state between normal aging processes and dementia. Its relevance is nowadays undisputed, both at the clinical and scientific research level. The diagnosis of both Dementia and Mild Cognitive Impairment are for the time being limited to clinical features and supportive auxiliary test results, which stresses the need for a thorough neuropsychological and neuropsychiatric assessment.