Organic Brain Syndromes

Question 1

What is confusion?

Answer 1

The inability of an individual to think with usual speed and clarity.
Marked by disorientation, impaired attention/concentration, inability to register immediate happenings and recall, lost perceptiveness, hallucinations, and diminution of mental activity.

Question 2

What is Delirium?

Answer 2

A special type of confusion, in which the individual experiences…

1. disordered perceptions
2. terrifying hallucinations
3. vivid dreams, fantasies,and intense emotions.

Question 3

What is amnesia?

Answer 3

The loss of the ability to form memories despite an alert state of mind.

Assumes an ability to grasp roblem, use language, and maintain motivation

Question 4

What is dementia?

Answer 4

Loss of the ability to reason.

A deterioration of all intellectual/cognitive function, without disturbances in perception.

Question 5

Describe disturbance of perception.

Answer 5

A failure to properly synthesize perceptions.
Marked by sensory distortions/misidentifications.
Possibly hallucinations.

Question 6

Which is more vulnerable, short- or long- term memory?

Answer 6

Short term memory

Question 7

How to evaluate a patient’s possible disturbance of thinking?

Answer 7

Evaluating a patient’s spontaneous verbal productions by engaging him/her in conversation.
Evaluation of organization of thoughts, transitions, and grasp of reality.

Question 8

Symptom’s Dr. Rosen said were more associated with psychiatric disorders than organic brain disorders

Answer 8

Disturbances of emotion, mood, and affect

Disturbance of impulse

Question 9

A reliable history of a patient with an organic brain disorder should always include…

Answer 9

supplementary information from a person other than the patient.

Question 10

Who has more trouble with loss insight, organics or psychiatric patients?

Answer 10

Organics.

Question 11

How do you assess sustained mental activity?

Answer 11

Serial Sevens

Question 12

Special tests of localized cerebral fxn?

Answer 12

grasping, sucking, aphasia testing, cortical sensory function, drawing

Question 13

Special laboratory procedures used for organic brain disorders.

Answer 13

Lumbar puncture, EEG, CT Scan, MRI, biochemical studies, genetic testing

Question 14

Acute confusional states associated with medical illnesses include…

Answer 14

• Metabolic disorders (hepatic stupor, uremia, hypoxia, hypercapnia, hypoglycemia, porphyria, hyponatremia)
• High Fever
• Congestive Heart Failure
• Posttraumatic Psychosis

Question 15

Drug associated with an acute confusional state

Answer 15

Spice

Question 16

Acute confusional states associated with disease of the nervous system.

Answer 16

Cerebral vascular disease, Tumor, Abscess
Subdural hematoma
Meningitis
Encephalitis

Question 17

Six diseases associated with delirium

Answer 17

Typhoid Fever
Pneumonia
Septicemia
Rheumatic Fever
Thyrotoxicosis
Alcoholism/DTs

Question 18

Causes of delirium associated with disease of the nervous system. (5)

Answer 18

Vascular, Neoplastic
Cerebral constitution and laceration (traumatic)
Acute purulent or tuberculosis meningitis
Subarachnoid hemorrhage
Encephalitis

Question 19

Three nutritional deficiency states associated with dementia

Answer 19

Pellagra (B3 def)
Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome (B1 def)
Subacute combined degeneration (B12 def)

Question 20

Diseases associated with dementias (6)

Answer 20

Hypothyroid
Cushing's
Nutrient Deficiency
Chronic meningoencephalitis
Hepatolenticular degeneration
Chronic intoxication

Question 21

Neurological signs associated with dementias without obvious disease. (5)

Answer 21

Huntington's Chorea
Schilder's disease
Tay-Sach's disease
Myoclonic epilepsy
Jakob-Creutzfelt disease

Question 22

What type of hydrocephalus is associated with dementia

Answer 22

Communicating hydroceph. that occurs after loss of absorptive capacity of the meninges

Question 23

Disease in which dementia is the only evidence ot neurological or medical disease

Answer 23

Alzheimer’s
Senile Dementia
Pick’s disease

Question 24

What parts of the brain does Pick’s alter

Answer 24

Frontal and Temporal Lobes