Primary progressive apraxia: an unusual ideomotor syndrome

BACKGROUND: Primary progressive apraxia is a rare form of apraxia in the absence of dementia which develops insidiously and is slowly progressive. Most reports of patients with apraxia also describe coexisting aphasias or involve additional apraxias with affected speech, usually in the setting of neurodegenerative diseases such as corticobasal degeneration, Alzheimer’s disease or frontotemporal dementia. The aim of this report is to describe and demonstrate by video two cases of isolated primary progressive ideomotor apraxia seen in our clinic. CASE PRESENTATION: We describe two patients with 2–5 years of progressive difficulty using their hands, despite having intact cognition and lack of correlating lesions on imaging. CONCLUSION: We report two cases of primary progressive apraxia that may be early presentations of taupathic disease in both patients. In both cases, there is isolated profound ideomotor apraxia of the hands, with preserved cognition, language skills, muscle power and tone, and gait. There are no correlating lesions on imaging. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s40734-017-0064-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.