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On the base of clinical psychological and electrophysiological studies of 34 patients with primary manifestations of brain circulation insufficiency good tolerance and high efficiency of Tanakan course treatment (3 x 40 mg/day for 3 months) were showen. Tanakan decreased manifestations of clinical syndrome, improved psychological functions and electrophysiological parameters. Prospective study supported the stability of positive changes in the status of patients for 12 months after Tanakan course treatment.

Computed tomography was used to study the prevalence rates of various types of intracranial pathology, hydrocephalus (HDC) and cortical atrophy (CA) in patients with late dementia (LD) and to comparatively assess the informative value of tomographic methods of cerebral morphometry. Computed tomographic data were obtained from 432 patients with LD. Despite the type of dementia, the authors revealed intracranial abnormalities of various etiology in 24.5%, postischemic foci being prevalent. Tumors, arachnoidal cysts, and chronic subdural hematomas were more infrequently diagnosed (in 2.6% of cases). HDC and CA were detected in 81.5 and 82.2% of patients with LD, respectively.

On the basis of examining 86 senile schizophrenics with defective initial conditions two groups of such conditions were specified: 1) defect conditions retaining the structure specific for schizophrenia (apathic defect, apathic mental deficiency and its variant with pseudosenile disturbances); 2) defect conditions, approaching by their manifestations to the picture of psychic disintegration associated with senile dementia. The psychopathological structure of the first group of defect conditions primarily reflects the degree of the schizophrenia progression. Their time course in old age was limited to insignificant age-related modifications and decompensation. Deficit conditions in the second group develop the more frequently, the closer to old age the period of the maximum activity of the schizophrenic process and the older the patients.

The authors investigated the impact of single CT investigation of senile dementia patients. CT was assessed visually. Investigated were 214 patients (23 with senile dementia, 29 with Alzheimer disease, 14 with Pick disease, 90 with vasculogenic dementia, 58 with other forms of dementia). The overall high efficiency of CT was shown in diagnosis of senile dementia. Depending on peculiar clinico-morphological relations different patterns of CT contribution to dementia diagnosis are determined: its verification, detection of concomitant (clinically latent) pathology, establishment of an alternative diagnosis, reduction of the number of diagnostic hypotheses, correction of a diagnostic error.

Thirty-eight patients with late mentally deteriorating processes were studied. Using a standardized neuropsychological method, the authors have outlined four major variants of neuropsychological syndromes characteristic of damage to definite zones of the brain. Comparison of these data with the results of clinical and computer-aided tomographic examination showed that the neuropsychological approach is an adequate method in the combined study of senile dementia.