Use of Hachinski Ischemic Score in the memory clinic: Thai experience (original) (raw)

The validity ofHachinski Ischemic Score (HIS) in differentiating between Alzheimer's disease (AD) and Vascular dementia (VaD) has been questioned and compared with the gold standard autopsy. To confirm that the HIS can be used to differentiate related VaD from AD in a Thai population. A prospective study of 398 patients who were attending the Memory Clinic, at Siriraj Hospital between January 2001 and October 2003. The 214 patients, with a mean age of 71.15 + 10.20 years, were classified as AD, VaD or mixed dementia (AD with cerebrovascular disease) in proportion of 60.2%, 30.4%, and 9.3% respectively. The authors propose HIS at 5 as a cut off point to differentiate patients with AD and those with VaD or AD with cerebrovascular disease with sensitivity of 85.3% and specificity of 72.9%. The HIS can be applied to differentiate dementia related vascular etiology from AD in a Thai population.