Effect and Prognosis of Rehabilitation for Cerebrovascular Dementia in the Elderly

The effect of rehabilitation and prognosis for elderly cases of cerebrovascular dementia were evaluated by comparing the group of the patients receiving rehabil-itation with those who did not receive rehabilitation. There were no significant differences in the age, neu-rological symptoms, psychotic symptoms, physical com-plications, ADL and Hasegawa's dementia rating scale between the two groups. The main reason for rehabil-itation was recurrence of cerebrovascular attack (42.9%), disuse atrophy (42.9%) and bone fracture and others (14.3%). There was significant improvement of ADL in the patients showing a score of more than 10 on Hasegawa's dementia rating scale and in the patients given drugs to improve cerebral circulation and metabo-lism, but there was no significant improvement of Hasegawa's dementia rating scale. Concerning the prognosis of patients receiving the rehabilitation, there was no change of ADL and Hasegawa's dementia rating scale. In the group of patients which did not receive rehabilitation, significant decrease of ADL was noted, but there was no change of Hasegawa's dementia rating scale.