Psychiatria pre prax 5/2005

COGNITIVE DISORDERS IN OLD AGE

The term “cognitive disorders in old age” (inaccurately, in practice often “disorders of memory”) is in the literature described by endless number of syndromes and units. Classification of mainly mild cognitive disorders, which do not fulfil criteria for a dementia and which accompany “normal” aging, is not homogenous and is chaotic. From the historical point of view, we can start with so called “benign senescent forgetfulness” (V. J. Kral 1962), then continue by so called “mild cognitive disorder” and end up with many forms of dementia. In this article, I would like to outline present view on cognitive disorders on the border between normal cognition and dementia – both on those which accompany “normal” cognitive aging and also those termed “mild cognitive disorder”. This condition is a kind of “predementia”. I would like to describe these conditions and classify them based on the information from literature and show an importance of diagnosis of mild cognitive disorders in elderly. These terms do not have rooted Czech equivalents and that why I largely use English terms.

Keywords: cognitive disorders in old age, mild cognitive disorder, cognitive disorder non-dementia, dementia.