The St. George's dementia bed investigation study: cardiovascular, neurological and neuropsychological correlates.

The results of the cardiovascular, neurological and neuropsychological examination of a series of patients admitted to the St. George's dementia investigation bed and who later came to postmortem are compared in relation to their pathological diagnosis. Individual clinical signs were not found to differentiate between cases of dementia with vascular versus those with Alzheimer's disease pathology, although multivariate analysis suggested that there was a pattern of signs associated with cerebrovascular disease. A vascularity index was constructed from these signs; it achieved a useful level of discrimination between vascular and nonvascular causes of dementia.