Frontotemporal dementia: clinical, neuropsychological, and neuroimaging description

Describe the relationships between the clinical, neuropsychological, and imaging findings from a group of patients diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia (FTD).

The clinical histories, cognitive tests, and structural and perfusion brain images of 21 patients of the Psychiatric Hospital Universitario del Valle, Cali, Colombia, were reviewed.

The average age was 59.8 years; the average time for the evolution of disease symptoms was 2.7 years; the most common variant was the behavioral variant; the most common alteration shown through nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) was frontotemporal atrophy, while the most common alteration shown through single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) was frontotemporal hypoperfusion. The most significant result was the normal performance of 61.9% of patients in praxis exams, which was associated with alterations in temporoparietal perfusion in the SPECT images (p <0.02). Neither the mini-mental state evaluation nor the Clock Drawing Executive Test (CLOX) served as screening tests.