Abstract

GONCALVES, Cátia  and  PINHO, Maria Salomé. Vascular cognitve impairment: Controversies and challenges. Psic., Saúde & Doenças [online]. 2014, vol.15, n.2, pp.427-438. ISSN 1645-0086.

Cerebrovascular disease is the second most common cause of cognitive impairment in the elderly. Although the vascular dementia (VD) designation is widely used, there are a number of limitations related to cerebrovascular disease heterogeneity, several clinical presentations, diagnostic criteria unconformity, circularity and mixed dementia existence. The term vascular cognitive impairment (VCI) has been proposed to comprise a broad spectrum of cognitive disorders sharing a suspected vascular cause, with several degrees of severity. VCI is a frequent clinical picture and is associated with worse cognition, institutionalization and death. Emphasizing the early detection of dementia, which is believed may have prodromal symptoms, it is given an opportunity to clinic interventions such as the control of vascular risk factors. Additionally subcortical form has been indicated as a solution to identify more homogenous groups of patients with a more predicable outcome. Beside these aspects, in this paper, we discuss relationships between VD and VCI, as well as some future directions.

Keywords : vascular cognitive impairment; vascular dementia; preventable disorder.

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