Atención y memoria en una muestra de pacientes con quejas de memoria

The goal of this investigation was to evaluate cognitive deficits on attention and memory through neuropsychological testing in patients with memory complaints. We assessed 204 subjects divided into four groups: 33 controls, 62 with No Cognitive Disorder, 65 with non demential cognitive disorder and 44 with dementia of the Alzheimer’s Type. We administrated several neuropsychological tests to evaluate focalized attention, sustained attention, attention span, concentration, retention and recall memory for both verbal and visual material. The results show that patients with dementia of the Alzheimer’s Type show deficit in all the modalities of attention and memory assessed. The patients with non demential cognitive disorder differ from controls only if the group was divided by age. In patients under 60 years of age there were no differences in the tests administered compared to controls; the group of patients with 60 years and over was different from controls in some tests of attention and memory, with the group of controls having better results than the group of patients with non demential cognitive disorder. We conclude that this group of patients corresponds to Mild Cognitive Disorder and that this entity should consider age in its diagnostic criteria.