Curable Dementia

Excerpt

To the editor: The article on dementia in the elderly (1) brings to the attention of physicians the potentials for prevention or amelioration of this silent epidemic. However, the contributors have, in certain important respects, both overstated and understated the case.

In the discussion of reversible dementia the authors repeatedly assert that 20% of patients with dementia may have reversible causes. The problem lies with the validity of this estimate as applied to dementia in the elderly. This figure was obtained by combining "data from four large series" that gave a total of 406 patients, 82 (20.2%) of whom were