P3-008: Assesment OG language functions on patients with Alzheimer’s disease and Pick’s diseases

Abstract

Although language disturbances in dementia were recognized earlier, the exact nature and extent of language impairment in Alzheimer's and Pick's diseases has been the subject of much recent research, giving rise to more systematic study of the nature of communication deficits. Some authors have linked language dysfunction these types of dementia to aphasia, while others have emphasized the differences in language behavior of demented and aphasic patients. In this work, we report three cases with Alzheimer–type dementia and three cases with Picks disease in order to estimate the profile of language disorders. MMSE, BDAE and BNT tests have been used. The obtained results have shown that patients with Alzheimer's disease have severe language disturbances manifested by anomia, impaired auditory comprehension, word–finding difficulties and a lack cohesion in discourse, agraphia and dyslexia. Besides, they have exibited memory disorders, apraxia and agnosia. On the other side, two patients with Pick's diseases have semantic aphasia and the other has nonfluent aphasia. Although those patients have progressive language functions damage, memory, praxia and gnostic functions are not severely damaged.They have been treated for one year with antycholinergic inhibitors (Exelon and Aricept). Positive effects were found in patients with Alzheimer's disease, while patients with Pick's diseases did not show any improvement. We confronted language disturbances profile of patients with Alzheimer's disease and patients with Pick's diseases againts classical aphasics syndromes.