Behavioral and/or Dysexecutive variant of Alzheimer's

ydurham

Recent visit to specialist neurologist with MRI reveals my SO has dysexecutive variation of typical Alzheimer''s, somewhat earlier onset, rather than frontotemporal dementia which we suspsected due to his progressively worsening behavior and social skills, frightening by the time we got him into a hospital for evaluation. I don''t see much on the message boards about this particular variation that does not have noticeable memory deficit at first. Is there anyone else dealing with this as a caregiver? Thanks!

French

About 2 years before the AD diagnosis (at 49) I remarked that he wasn’t able to do things he was used to do : drilling a wall, building a small  structure, preparing a cake, planning something... At this moment memory issues couldn’t be remarked but they appeared soon after. First, it wasn’t really memory issues, but more about planning : Unable to go to his  appointments at the right moment (day or hour), planned lunch with friends but never went to the restaurant...

Crushed

I suspect it is  term more common in the UK take a look at

  In our cohort, nearly all participants were affected during their productive working years at symptom onset, and it took an average of 3 years before they received an accurate diagnosis by a behavioural neurologist. Initial misdiagnosis was common. When clear documentation was available 32 of 39 cases were initially misdiagnosed. Diagnostic confusion can arise from the younger age of onset, the neuropsychological profile, and neuroimaging and biomarker findings. As our example case (Box 2) illustrates, there can exist discordance between a patient’s previous high levels of function with the presence of severe multi-domain impairment on cognitive testing.

https://academic.oup.com/braincomms/article/2/1/fcaa068/5847591

Iris L.

IMO, a major problem in the overall area of caring for PWDs and families is delay in diagnosis.  This is because people, including many professionals, are not aware that signs such as impaired executive functions and lapses in judgement, especially financial judgement, are early signs that can appear before significant memory loss.

I complained of such symptoms but none of my doctors picked up on it.  The neuropsychologist who tested me was the first to mention the term impaired executive functions.  To tell the truth, I myself had not heard that term before, or I had forgotten, and I was a medical professional myself.  

Some people might say, why diagnose early if there is no cure?  To search for treatable dementia mimics, to begin supportive tretment, to plan finances and to prevent financial abuses and losses, and to prevent the myriad of interpersonal and familial relationship problems that inevitably ensue with dementia dynamics.

Iris