[Cerebrovascular dementia; correlation of computed and histopathologic findings]

Computed tomography is often insensitive to such lesions as atrophic demyelination, enlarged perivascular spaces and infarction in the periventricular white matter. In attempt to better understand the discrepancy between the pathologic and X-CT findings, the author correlated areas that had focal, patchy on X-CT and brains with gross and microscopic findings. Patients with cerebral strokes had larger volume infarcts characterized centrally by necrosis, axonal loss, and demyelination. The progressive subcortical vascular encephalopathy (Binswanger's disease) is characterized by ischemic demyelinization of white matter provoked by hypertensive vascular changes in small vessels and is usually accompanied by multiple lacunar infarcts in a periventricular area and the basal ganglia. Small, deep hemispheric infarcts may be of no clinical significance unless a sufficient aggregate of these occurs. It should be pointed out that many small infarcts are clinically silent, and chronic multifocal ischemia may be responsible for observed senescent changes in cerebral tissue. The extension of the infarcted area might be most important in the development of cerebrovascular dementia. Mixed forms of degenerative dementia and any type of cerebral vascular disease are common and account for 10-20% of all dementias.