Behavioral and activities of daily living inventories in the diagnosis of frontotemporal lobar degeneration and Alzheimer’s disease

The differential diagnosis between frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is often challenging. OBJECTIVES: To verify the usefulness of behavioral and activities of daily living inventories in the differential diagnosis between FTLD and AD. METHODS: Caregivers of 12 patients with FTLD (nine with frontotemporal dementia, two with semantic dementia and one with progressive non-fluent aphasia) and of 12 patients with probable AD were interviewed. The Brazilian version of the Frontal Behavioral Inventory (FBI) and Disability Assessment for Dementia (DAD ) were used. RESULTS: The mean of the MMSE score was 12.4±10.7for patients with FTLD and 11.9±6.2for patients with AD (p=0.93). Mean scores on the DAD were 33.7±27.7in patients with FTLD and 55.6±29.7in patients with AD (p=0.06), while for the FBI they were 42.6±10.0for FTLD and 16.7±11.7for AD (p<0.01). CONCLUSIONS: In this study, FBI was found to be a helpful tool for the differential diagnosis between FTLD and AD. Although the DAD was not useful in differential diagnosis in our sample we believe it to be important for measuring the severity of the disease through quantitative and qualitative assessment of functional deficits of the patients.