Differential Diagnosis of Dementia & Cognitive Impairment

Cortical Dementias #

Alzheimer’s Disease Dementia #

• Amnestic variant
• Posterior cortical atrophy / Posterior variant (PCA)
• Logopenic variant primary progressive aphasia (lvPPA) (Atypical Alzheimer’s)

Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD) #

Language Variant #

• Primary progressive aphasia (PPA)
  • Semantic variant primary progressive aphasia (svPPA)
  • Nonfluent agrammatic primary progressive aphasia (nfaPPA)

Behavioural Variant #

• Behavioural variant fronto-temporal dementia (bvFTD)

Subcortical Dementias #

• Vascular cognitive impairment
• Parkinson’s disease dementia
• Huntington’s disease dementia

Atypical Parkinsonian Syndromes #

• Progressive supra-nuclear palsy (PSP)
• Multiple system atrophy (MSA)

Cortico-subcortical Dementias #

• Corticobasal degeneration (CBD)
• Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease dementia
• Dementia with Lewy Bodies (DLB)

Other differential diagnoses #

• Accelerated long-term forgetting
• Delirium
• Mild Cognitive Impairment (temporary or prodromal to a dementia syndrome)
• Pseudodementia
• Cognitive impairment due to:
  • alcohol toxicity
  • anaesthesia
  • genetic and developmental disorders
  • hydrocephalus
  • multiple sclerosis
  • stroke
  • traumatic brain injury
  • pharmacotherapies
  • radiation treatment
  • surgery
  • toxic chemicals
  • and more!