An Italian research on the importance of early diagnosis of the clinical paintings of reversible dementia, was recently published on 23 July in the international scientific journal ‘Medicine’. The study was conducted in Messina on patients with dementia from an idiopathic night hydrocephalus (INPP, Idiopathic Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus). These patients, have the characteristic of presenting symptoms similar to other clinical paintings of dementia, such as dementia from Alzheimer’s (AD, Alzheimer dementia) and if treated neurosurgically, I can face reversibility of symptoms, unlike other forms of dementia with non -reversible symptoms.
The work was carried out by researchers of different academic afferences, the neurosurgical clinical part concerns the supervision of the teachers Antonino Germanò and Giovanni Raffa (chair of neurosurgery of the University of Messina), the methodological section relating to the psychological-clinical evaluation was curated by Prof. Carmela Dental (clinical psychologist and professor of the University of Messina) and Prof. Maria Catena Quattropani (clinical psychologist and teacher of the University of Catania), while the statistical-economic analysis model has been based on an original model of neural networks curated by the teachers Paolo Massimo Buscema (director of the Semeion Research Center in Rome and professor of the University of Denver (Colorado), Giulia Massini (Semeion, Rome) and Lara Gitto (health economist and teacher at the of Messina).
Through the perception of patients, different response elements have been highlighted thanks to the application of a specific model of artificial neural network analysis (CANS, Artificial Neural Networks) which has made it possible to analyze the relationships between the cognitive functioning of patients and their perceptual characteristics, providing different response models in two clinical paintings of dementia (dementia from inph and dementia type Alzheimer).
The study marks the importance of an early differential diagnosis in the treatment of dementia clinical paintings, especially in reversible symptomatic paintings for a better quality of life of patients.