Conclusion: The cognitive deterioration is probably higher in patientswith ischemic stroke in carotid territory, but to certificate this we need astudy with a larger number of patients.

doi:10.1016/j.jns.2009.02.293

Attentional deficits and cognitive outcomes in stroke survivors

B.C. Leea, K.H. Yua, H.J Baeb, J.M. Parkc, Y.G Mind, G.H. Kwond, S. Junge, I.S Kohf,K.S. Hongg, Y.W KanghaDepartment of Neurology, Hallym University, Hallym University Sacred HeartHospital, Anyang, Gyunggi, South KoreabDepartment of Neurology, Seoul National University, Bundang Seoul NationalUniversity Hospital, Bundang, Gyunggi, South KoreacDepartment of Neurology, Eulji University, Nowon Eulji Hospital, Seoul,South KoreadDepartment of Neurology, Hallym University, Hangang Sacred Heart Hospital,Seoul, South KoreaeDepartment of Neurology, Hallym University, Kangnam Sacred Heart Hospital,Seoul, South KoreafDepartment of Neurology, National Medical Center, National Medical Center,Seoul, South KoreagDepartment of Neurology, Inje University, Ilsan Pack Hospital, Ilsan, Gyunggi,South KoreahDepartement of Psychology, Hallym University, Hallym University Sacred HeartHospital, Anyang, Gyunggi, South Korea

Background and Aims: It is well known that the attentional function isclosely overlapped with executive function, which may relate particularly tothe problems in activities of daily living and increase caregivers' burden ofdemented patients. We tried to determine whether attentional deficitdeveloped after stroke correlated with the global cognitive outcomes andwhich attentional test influenced on cognitive outcomes in stroke survivors.

Methods: Total 166 patients with acute ischemic stroke underwentevaluation with attentional tests within 2 weeks after stroke onset as well asneurological examination and clinical characteristics. At 3 months afterstroke, 119 patients were prospectively assessed on general cognition, verbal,executive and visuospatial function, memory function with a comprehensiveneuropsychological test battery again.

Results: The mean (SD) age of 119 subjects was 63.9 (9.3) years, and 77(64.7%) were men. On the average, they had 9.6 (5.3) years of education. Themean (SD) result of the Korean Mini Mental State Examination (K-MMSE) at3months after strokewas 26.0 (3.9). As analyzedwith correlation analysis, digitspan forward and backward, Stroopwords and color reading, TrialMakingA andB time, symbol digit modality test corrective responsewere significantly relatedwith 3 months K-MMSE scores (Spearman’s correlation coefficients r=0.32,o.63, 0.47, 0.59, −0.57, −0.54, 0.65, respectively; p<0.05). But the lattercancellation test and the total score of the attention questionnaire did not showany significant relationship with 3 months K-MMSE scores in stroke survivor.

Conclusions: The attentional deficits demonstrated in patients with acuteischemic stroke are related to the post-stroke cognitive declines, which maybe explained by frontal executive dysfunction in stroke survivors.

doi:10.1016/j.jns.2009.02.294

Early poststroke psychocognitive impairment: Dementiaand/or depression

D. Naconecinii, F. StefanacheIst Neurological Clinic, Iasi, Romania

Background: There are many interconnections between pathologicalmechanism involved in production of dementia and cognitive impairment evenin stroke patients. Early detection andmanagement of these disorders providedbetter prevention of possible dementia. The aim of this study was to explore thefactors, which can affect psycho cognitive impairment of poststroke patients.

Method: using theMMSE (mini-mental state examination), GDS (GeriatricDepression Scale), NIH (National Institute of Health) stroke scalewe evaluatedfifty consecutive patients with different type of ischemic stroke, admitted in I

Neurological Clinic of “St Trinity”Hospital from Iasi, Romania. We also studiedvascular risk factors (age, cardiac, cerebrovascular, lipid and endocrinedisorders; smoking, alcoholism, lifestyle, obesity, brain lesions; cognitivefactors like marital status, level of instruction etc.). We excluded those withaphasia or other sensory deficits, which can influence the psychocognitiveevaluation also do not assess patient in first 7 days after the stroke.

Results: our patients (15 with lacunar stroke, 35 with thromboembolicstroke) had relative important cognitive impairment (19 individuals withMMSE score below 20, but only 4 below 10) and relative important depression(GDS scorewas below10 in 16 cases).We found correlation between some riskfactors and cognitive impairment (age, hypertension, alcoholism, brain lesion,NIHSS score), also between some common factors and affective impairment.

Conclusion: Cerebrovascular disease can produce important cognitiveand psychological impairment which can be easily evaluated using some“bedside” tools: MMSE, GDS. We must continue this evaluation for completereliable results, including treatment influence on psychocognitive symptoms.

doi:10.1016/j.jns.2009.02.295

Prospective and retrospective memory in Alzheimer’s disease andvascular dementia: Similar patterns of impairment

A. Livnera, E. Jonsson-Laukkaa, S. Karlssona,b, L. Backmana

aAging Research Center, Division of Geriatric Epidemiology, NVS, KarolinskaInstitutet, Stockholm, SwedenbDepartment of Clinical Neuroscience, Psychiatry Section, Karolinska Institutet,Karolinska Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden

Backgrounds and aims: Prospective memory (ProM) involves remember-ing to perform actions after a delay. ProM is impaired in Alzheimer’s disease(AD), whereas it remains unclear whether ProM is affected also in vasculardementia (VaD).

Retrospective memory (RetM) involves remembering events experiencedin the past. As is well known, RetM is impaired in AD and VaD. Less is knownabout whether the patterns of impairment across the stages of encoding,consolidation and retrieval are similar in AD and VaD.

The aims of this study are to examine whether 1) persons with AD andVaD differ from controls on both ProM and RetM measures, and 2) encoding,consolidation and retrieval in RetM are similarly impaired in AD and VaD.

Methods: Twenty-one persons with VaD (including six with mixeddementia), 79 persons with AD and 352 controls from the KungsholmenProject were included. To assess ProM, participants were instructed at thebeginning of the session to remind the test leader to make a phone call aftercompleting all tests. The RetM task comprised recall of a list of words fromfour taxonomic categories.

Results: ProM was impaired in both AD and VaD. There were nodifferences between the dementia groups. Also for RetM, the AD and VaDgroups were outperformed by the controls on all measures. Again, noperformance differences were noted between the dementia groups.

Conclusions: The results show that the AD-related ProM impairmentgeneralizes to VaD. This can be expected given that frontal brain regions arestrongly implicated in ProM, and frontal alterations are seen in VaD. Previousresearch has also shown similar patterns of cognitive impairment in AD andVaD.

Also for RetM, it was impossible to separate the dementia groups on thebasis of memory performance, as they were equally impaired across thestages of encoding, consolidation, and retrieval.

doi:10.1016/j.jns.2009.02.296

Vascular dementia (VD) compared to Alzheimer disease (AD) andsemantic dementia (SD)

Clinical study

S.M. Demea, D.C Jianub, P.D. Nanua, S.T. Kory-Calomfirescuc

aVasile Goldis Western University of Arad, Arad, RomaniabVictor Babes University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Timisoara, Timis, RomaniacIuliu Hatieganu University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Cluj Napoca, Cluj, Romania

Abstracts / Journal of the Neurological Sciences 283 (2009) 240–320318