Clinical and demographic features of patients with dementia attended in a tertiary outpatient clinic

Abstract

We describe clinical and socio-demographic features of patients with dementia attended in a tertiary outpatient clinic during a three years period (56.9% of the total attendance). Most of them were men, white, from the local community, urban district. Nobody had a job at the moment, two thirds of them got social welfare benefit. They lived with their family, the caregiver being the spouse or a daughter. The education level was very low, a quarter of them being illiterate. They were referred mostly from the public health care service, by neurologists or psychiatrists due to cognitive disorders. Family history as well as individual history of previous neurological/psychiatric disorders were frequent, especially alcoholism, stroke, head trauma and dementia. The neurological exam showed abnormalities in two thirds of cases, chiefly extra-pyramidal and pyramidal signs. Alzheimer's disease was the most frequent cause, followed by cerebrovascular disorder; alcoholism and normal pressure hydrocephalus were also frequent causes. Most patients presented concomitant non-etiological neurological/psychiatric disorders, mainly alcoholism and depression, and non-neurological/psychiatric diseases, predominantly hypertension, cardiopathy and diabetes. Most patients had been referred under medication, frequently politherapy, including psychotropics.