Hornberger, M (2013) Clinicopathologic differences among patients with behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia. Neurology, 81 (8), [775]. (doi:10.1212/01.wnl.0000433967.51714.84).
Abstract
Mendez et al. found that distinguishing between pathologically confirmed bvFTD and AD can be determined by personality changes, problem-solving, and episodic memory deficits. This could have implications on future bvFTD diagnostic criteria. The higher incidence of episodic memory problems in AD raises the controversial issue: is a memory deficit a reliable diagnostic criterion in distinguishing between the pathologies? There is increasing evidence that an episodic memory deficit is a poor diagnostic predictor for bvFTD and AD, even in pathologically proven cases. Closer inspection of the authors' findings reveals that their neuropsychological memory measures confirm these findings by showing no episodic memory difference between bvFTD and AD. The authors based their recommendation on the binary informant-based decision of episodic memory deficits presence, which does not converge with their more objective neuropsychological findings. This discrepancy is concerning. The recommendation to discriminate between bvFTD and AD on the basis of memory deficits may not be warranted by their data. The authors should have mentioned this caveat in their publication.
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