Dementia-related behavioral changes - a physician's office-based study

This is a physician's office-based retrospective study of 161 dementia pati ents with (94) and without (67) behavioral symptoms. Those with disturbed b ehavior were subdivided into patients with behavior changes at initial eval uation and those encountered in existing dementia. The two main groups and the subgroups were studied in relation to individual and disease characteri stics. The targeted behaviors (aggression, psychosis, aberrant motor behavi or and miscellaneous) were analyzed in relation to four dementia-related do mains namely cognitive impairment, language impairment, stage of illness (C DR) and functional disability (Rankin grades). No differences were observed between the two main groups in relation to age and gender and to cognitive impairment, language impairment and disability except for stage of illness (P = 0.01). There were no significant differences in terms of age and gend er in the two subgroups and in the frequency of single targeted behaviors b ut for psychosis which was the most commonly recorded disturbed behavior. T here was no correlation between the single targeted behaviors and the diffe rent domains examined but for aberrant motor behavior and stage of illness (P = 0.04) in the subgroups. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rig hts reserved.