[Care for the patients with frontotemporal lobar degeneration]

In frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD), which primarily involves the front of the brain, characteristic psychiatric symptoms and disordered behaviors, such as disinhibition and stereotypical behaviors, often appear in the foreground at the initial stages of the disease. It is therefore an extremely difficult disease to treat. However, unlike diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, which involve general dementia, there is a clear dissociation between the conserved and disordered functions; therefore, it is possible to enhance the conserved functions and simultaneously modify the disordered functions into adaptive behaviors in order to provide care and increase the quality of life (QOL). In this paper, we report the use of routinizing therapy, which is an occupational therapeutic approach, involving speech therapy for semantic dementia (SD), drug therapy for stereotypic behaviors and psychiatric symptoms of FTLD, family education, etc.