[The clinical incidence of frontal dementia].

INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVES: Although the neuropathology of Pick s disease and the frontal lobe dementias has been well defined, the complexity of the clinical diagnosis makes epidemiological studies difficult. The objective of this study was to determine the annual clinical incidence of fronto temporal dementia.

PATIENTS AND METHODS: A retrospective observational study was made of the diagnoses of all persons attended in UVAMID during the period 1999 2000. Clinical evaluation was standardized following a protocol of the UVAMID. This included a clinical history obtained by interviewing the patient and a reliable informant, general medical and neurological examination, neuropsychological examination and a battery of complementary tests.

RESULTS: In clinical practice the incidence of the different types of dementia varies between 93/100,000 in Alzheimer type dementia and 14/100,000 in DFT f. When age groups are considered, there is a progressive increase in the incidence of DFT f with 12/100,000 in the age group 46 69 years and 57/100,000 in the group of 75 79 years.

CONCLUSIONS: The results of this study show that cases of DFT f form 2.7% of the new cases occurring annually. The main limitation of this study is that since these patients were referred for consultation from primary care centres, they form a non representative clinically biased sample which limits extrapolation of the results.