Vascular Dementia Is Underdiagnosed

Abstract

Whether the vascular contribution to 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 into 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, 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 al 1 introduced the term multi-infarct and suggested that vascular disease only caused by a series of relatively large infarcts, enough to