Wandering syndrome in dementia — nosospecific characteristics and clinical-psychopathоtological features

Abstract

The work was performed at the Department of Psychiatry, Psychology and Sexology of Danylo Halytsky’s Lviv National Medical University and the clinical departments of the Lviv Regional Clinical Psychiatric Hospital. We studied the clinical and psychopathological features of wandering syndrome in patients with neuropsychiatric symptoms of dementia due to vascular, neurodegenerative pathologies and mixed genesis among patients with moderate and severe dementia who underwent inpatient and outpatient treatment due to these symptoms. The aim was to study and compare the parameters of wandering syndrome among patients with different types of dementia. A reliable association was found between the following characteristics of wandering syndrome and types of dementia: wandering that occurred only in the middle of the night was significantly more common in vascular dementia than in neurodegenerative dementia; cases of wandering, accompanied by disorientation, regardless of the time of day, mostly occurred with vascular dementia; attempts to escape and escape from the apartment — more often in patients with vascular than neurodegenerative dementia; loss of orientation when leaving the usual place of residence was observed mainly among patients with mixed dementia; the intensity of wandering in the number and frequency of wandering acts correlates with cases of mixed dementia. The study of the features of wandering allows us to examine this phenomenon in more detail to predict the course of both individual neuropsychiatric syndrome and the disease as a whole, as well as to provide comprehensive and effective care for this group of patients.