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The Difficult Diagnosis of Posterior Cortical Atrophy in a 62-Year-Old Woman
Posterior cortical atrophy (PCA) describes a rare heterogenous neurodegenerative syndrome with early visuospatial and visuoperceptual deficits due to atrophy of parieto-occipital brain regions. Here, we describe the case of a 62-year-old woman showing severe cognitive impairments as well as hemianop...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
SAGE Publications
2019
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6900588/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31203704 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0891988719856696 |
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author | Ziegler, Georg C. Haarmann, Axel Daniels, Christine Herr, Alexandra |
author_facet | Ziegler, Georg C. Haarmann, Axel Daniels, Christine Herr, Alexandra |
author_sort | Ziegler, Georg C. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Posterior cortical atrophy (PCA) describes a rare heterogenous neurodegenerative syndrome with early visuospatial and visuoperceptual deficits due to atrophy of parieto-occipital brain regions. Here, we describe the case of a 62-year-old woman showing severe cognitive impairments as well as hemianopsia and all core symptoms of Bálint's syndrome. Years ago, the patient had complained about a “tunnel view” and concentration problems. The diagnostic results point to a case of PCA with underlying Alzheimer pathology. The disease course until diagnosis lasted for 7 years, reflecting the diagnostic difficulties with this still largely unknown syndrome. The unfamiliar symptom presentation including fluctuations in cognitive performance, affective symptoms, cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarkers, which were at first inconspicuous, and a former suspected diagnosis of dissociative pseudodementia, altogether brought considerable uncertainty to the involved health-care professionals. We conclude that cases of “atypical dementia” presenting with visual symptoms, even if appearing unspecific at first, are suspect of PCA. This case report provides an ostensive overview of PCA, including imaging data, CSF-findings, original drawings and handwriting samples from the patient. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6900588 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2019 |
publisher | SAGE Publications |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-69005882019-12-12 The Difficult Diagnosis of Posterior Cortical Atrophy in a 62-Year-Old Woman Ziegler, Georg C. Haarmann, Axel Daniels, Christine Herr, Alexandra J Geriatr Psychiatry Neurol Case Report Posterior cortical atrophy (PCA) describes a rare heterogenous neurodegenerative syndrome with early visuospatial and visuoperceptual deficits due to atrophy of parieto-occipital brain regions. Here, we describe the case of a 62-year-old woman showing severe cognitive impairments as well as hemianopsia and all core symptoms of Bálint's syndrome. Years ago, the patient had complained about a “tunnel view” and concentration problems. The diagnostic results point to a case of PCA with underlying Alzheimer pathology. The disease course until diagnosis lasted for 7 years, reflecting the diagnostic difficulties with this still largely unknown syndrome. The unfamiliar symptom presentation including fluctuations in cognitive performance, affective symptoms, cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarkers, which were at first inconspicuous, and a former suspected diagnosis of dissociative pseudodementia, altogether brought considerable uncertainty to the involved health-care professionals. We conclude that cases of “atypical dementia” presenting with visual symptoms, even if appearing unspecific at first, are suspect of PCA. This case report provides an ostensive overview of PCA, including imaging data, CSF-findings, original drawings and handwriting samples from the patient. SAGE Publications 2019-06-16 2020-01 /pmc/articles/PMC6900588/ /pubmed/31203704 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0891988719856696 Text en © The Author(s) 2019 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). |
spellingShingle | Case Report Ziegler, Georg C. Haarmann, Axel Daniels, Christine Herr, Alexandra The Difficult Diagnosis of Posterior Cortical Atrophy in a 62-Year-Old Woman |
title | The Difficult Diagnosis of Posterior Cortical Atrophy in a 62-Year-Old
Woman |
title_full | The Difficult Diagnosis of Posterior Cortical Atrophy in a 62-Year-Old
Woman |
title_fullStr | The Difficult Diagnosis of Posterior Cortical Atrophy in a 62-Year-Old
Woman |
title_full_unstemmed | The Difficult Diagnosis of Posterior Cortical Atrophy in a 62-Year-Old
Woman |
title_short | The Difficult Diagnosis of Posterior Cortical Atrophy in a 62-Year-Old
Woman |
title_sort | difficult diagnosis of posterior cortical atrophy in a 62-year-old
woman |
topic | Case Report |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6900588/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31203704 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0891988719856696 |
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