[The frontal assessment battery at bed side(FAB) in patients with Parkinson's disease]

It is by no means easy to assess the frontal lobe function precisely in patients with neurological disorders. Recently, Dubois et al. (2000) reported a new bedside cognitive and behavioral battery for evaluating frontal lobe function. To evaluate the clinical efficacy of this frontal assessment battery at bedside (FAB), we performed both FAB and Hasegawa's dementia scale (HDS), a Japanese version of convenient clinical scaling of dementia resembling the Mini-Mental State Examination, in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) and age-matched controls. The FAB global score was significantly lower in the PD patients compared to the controls. On the other hand, there was no significant difference in the scores of HDS between the PD patients and controls. In the PD patients, there was no correlation between the FAB scores and their age or duration of the illness. The FAB is likely to be useful and convenient battery for assessing frontal lobe function at bedside in the PD patients.