Long-term outpatient treatment of senile dementia with oral physostigmine.
Märksõnad
Abstraktne
The authors describe five patients with senile dementia of the Alzheimer type (SDAT) who were treated with oral physostigmine from 1 to 3 3/4 years. An abbreviated form of the Buschke selective reminding test was used to assess the patients' short-term verbal memory at periodic clinic visits. Although one of the patients deteriorated progressively from the start of the physostigmine therapy and was taken off the drug after 1 year, there was no evidence of deterioration in memory performance on the average in the other four patients. Equally important, this open trial provides evidence of the safety of long-term treatment with physostigmine on an outpatient basis. The authors view their results as supporting the potential value of cholinesterase inhibition as a means of forestalling memory decline in SDAT patients.