The importance of cerebral lesions of vascular origin in the morphopathologic picture of old age dementia

Abstract

Our study refers to the complex neuropathologic examination of 70 demented patients (40 males and 30 females) above 60 years of age. Proportion of different types of cerebral damage with vascular pathogeny showed that 78% of the vascular dementia cases had as morphological background various aspects of multi-infarct dementia; softenings of variable size and lacunae, associated or not with myelinic rarefactions and pallor specific to subcortical arteriosclerotic encephalopathy; the remaining cases pointed to single anoxic lesion and/or subcortical encephalopathy. Perfect clinico-morphological diagnostic concordance has not always been reached in our sample--as in literature cases--often due to the dementia subtypes overlapping, and to the fact that the same clinical syndrome may show in different cerebral lesions. Likewise, no correlation has been found between lesion type, site or size and clinical picture or dementia course, which was also reported by other authors. On a morphopathogenic basis, we support the view that necrotic lesions of ischemic origin--multi-infarct and lacunar dementias--should be distinguished from myelinic rarefactions and pallor in the white matter, whose pathogeny is still controversial. Due attention is paid to the importance of the venous factor in the development of subcortical encephalopathy.