Objective. To determine whether semantic memory is impaired in vascular dementia and to assess the utility of semantic memory measures in dierentiating vascular dementia from dementia of Alzheimer's type (DAT).
Design. Case-control study.
Patients. Ten patients with Cambridge Mental Disorders in the Elderly (CAMDEX) diagnosis of deยฎnite' mild or moderate vascular dementia (mean age 77) were individually matched with 10 patients with a CAMDEX diagnosis of deยฎnite' DAT on the basis of age, education, sex, premorbid IQ (as measured by the National Adult Reading Test) and performance on the Cambridge Cognitive Examination (CAMCOG). In addition, 10 age, sex and education matched volunteer or relative controls were assessed.
Outcome measures. A detailed semantic memory test battery consisting of ยฎve subtests: category ยฏuency, picture naming, picture sorting, wordยฑpicture matching and generation of verbal deยฎnitions.
Results. Compared to normal controls, both patient groups were impaired on all subtests of the semantic battery with the exception of the wordยฑpicture matching test. No dierences were found between the vascular dementia and DAT groups on any of the measures.
Conclusions. Impairment of semantic memory is a feature of both vascular dementia and DAT. Tests of semantic memory appear, therefore, of little value in dierentiating between these two major causes of dementia. Further work is required to determine whether the nature of the processing deยฎcit is the same in these conditions.