Open Access"A lady of few words": Review of literature and report of a case of progressive nonfluent aphasia type of frontotemporal dementia
Author(s) -
Thomas Gregor Issac,
Sadanandavalli Retnaswami Chandra
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
journal of geriatric mental health
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2395-3322
pISSN - 2348-9995
DOI - 10.4103/2348-9995.195675
Subject(s) - frontotemporal dementia , semantic dementia , primary progressive aphasia , aphasia , psychology , dementia , agrammatism , sentence , cognition , comprehension , set (abstract data type) , cognitive psychology , audiology , medicine , psychiatry , linguistics , disease , pathology , computer science , philosophy , programming language
Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is a clinically and pathologically heterogeneous syndrome. It can be classified into three clinical syndromes depending on the early and predominant symptoms: A behavioral variant FTD and two language variants namely, semantic dementia, and progressive nonfluent aphasia (PNFA) which are very rare and elude diagnosis. We report the case of an elderly homemaker who came to our institute with features of cognitive decline and behavioral problems with language deficits in the form of nonfluent speech, impaired vocabulary to three pairs of words, agrammatism, and impaired single sentence comprehension with corroborative magnetic resonance imaging findings. PNFA is a rare clinical variant of FTD and often underdiagnosed. It should be considered in elderly patients who apart from having cognitive decline, behavioral problems, and absent insight also develop limited vocabulary, especially using a set of nouns to express themselves. Speech therapy and behavioral therapy in the initial stages can be of utility