Linguistic abilities in major vascular cognitive impairment: a comparative study with Alzheimer’s disease

We assessed the linguistic abilities of multi-infarct (cortical) dementia and subcortical ischemic vascular dementia (VaD) patients and compared the linguistic performance of VaD and Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) patients. A total of 23 VaD patients, 20 mild AD patients, and 31 controls participated in the study. All were evaluated using the Arizona Battery for Communication Disorders of Dementia (ABCD). Neuropsychological testing was performed to ascertain that VaD and AD patients had comparable cognitive performance. Both dementia groups performed more poorly than controls in the ABCD measures, except for the comparative question subtest. Comparison between VaD and AD patients showed statistically significant differences only in the confrontation naming subtest (p < 0.05), where paraphasias and visual errors were the most prevalent. AD patients showed a trend towards more circumlocution errors than VaD patients (p = 0.0483). When compared to controls, linguistic abilities of VaD patients were impaired in all measures of linguistic expression and linguistic comprehension, except for the comparative question subtest. Linguistic differences between VaD and AD patients were observed only in the confrontation naming subtest.