Organic Brain Syndromes Flashcards
What is confusion?
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.
What is Delirium?
A special type of confusion, in which the individual experiences…
- disordered perceptions
- terrifying hallucinations
- vivid dreams, fantasies,and intense emotions.
What is amnesia?
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
What is dementia?
Loss of the ability to reason.
A deterioration of all intellectual/cognitive function, without disturbances in perception.
Describe disturbance of perception.
A failure to properly synthesize perceptions.
Marked by sensory distortions/misidentifications.
Possibly hallucinations.
Which is more vulnerable, short- or long- term memory?
Short term memory
How to evaluate a patient’s possible disturbance of thinking?
Evaluating a patient’s spontaneous verbal productions by engaging him/her in conversation.
Evaluation of organization of thoughts, transitions, and grasp of reality.
Symptom’s Dr. Rosen said were more associated with psychiatric disorders than organic brain disorders
Disturbances of emotion, mood, and affect
Disturbance of impulse
A reliable history of a patient with an organic brain disorder should always include…
supplementary information from a person other than the patient.
Who has more trouble with loss insight, organics or psychiatric patients?
Organics.
How do you assess sustained mental activity?
Serial Sevens
Special tests of localized cerebral fxn?
grasping, sucking, aphasia testing, cortical sensory function, drawing
Special laboratory procedures used for organic brain disorders.
Lumbar puncture, EEG, CT Scan, MRI, biochemical studies, genetic testing
Acute confusional states associated with medical illnesses include…
- Metabolic disorders (hepatic stupor, uremia, hypoxia, hypercapnia, hypoglycemia, porphyria, hyponatremia)
- High Fever
- Congestive Heart Failure
- Posttraumatic Psychosis
Drug associated with an acute confusional state
Spice
Acute confusional states associated with disease of the nervous system.
Cerebral vascular disease, Tumor, Abscess
Subdural hematoma
Meningitis
Encephalitis
Six diseases associated with delirium
Typhoid Fever Pneumonia Septicemia Rheumatic Fever Thyrotoxicosis Alcoholism/DTs
Causes of delirium associated with disease of the nervous system. (5)
Vascular, Neoplastic
Cerebral constitution and laceration (traumatic)
Acute purulent or tuberculosis meningitis
Subarachnoid hemorrhage
Encephalitis
Three nutritional deficiency states associated with dementia
Pellagra (B3 def)
Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome (B1 def)
Subacute combined degeneration (B12 def)
Diseases associated with dementias (6)
Hypothyroid Cushing's Nutrient Deficiency Chronic meningoencephalitis Hepatolenticular degeneration Chronic intoxication
Neurological signs associated with dementias without obvious disease. (5)
Huntington's Chorea Schilder's disease Tay-Sach's disease Myoclonic epilepsy Jakob-Creutzfelt disease
What type of hydrocephalus is associated with dementia
Communicating hydroceph. that occurs after loss of absorptive capacity of the meninges
Disease in which dementia is the only evidence ot neurological or medical disease
Alzheimer’s
Senile Dementia
Pick’s disease
What parts of the brain does Pick’s alter
Frontal and Temporal Lobes
