Q rimary care providers (PCPs) often see elderly patients in their practice with symptoms of dementia, usually because of irreversible conditions. Normal pressure hydrocephalus (NPH) is an often unrecognized cause of dementia symptoms, and can be reversible with appropriate diagnosis and treatment, specifically ventriculoperitoneal (VP) shunting. It has been estimated that 375,000 Americans mis...

Because diagnostic criteria for normal pressure hydrocephalus have not been clearly determined, it is often difficult to differentiate patients with this potentially treatable condition from those with Alzheimer-type dementia. We have studied three patients with normal pressure hydrocephalus, 17 patients with Alzheimer-type dementia, and seven healthy elderly controls using positron emission to...

We report on an 80-year-old woman who had shunt-responsive idiopathic normal pressure hydrocephalus (iNPH). Her brain MRI showed an initial change in the subarachnoid space (a disproportional narrowing of the subarachnoid space at the cerebral high convexities) at the age of 70 years, followed by enlargement of the ventricles (Evans index: 0.31) at the age of 78. The observation suggests that c...

Normal pressure hydrocephalus (NPH) is a syndrome characterized by the triad of gait disturbance, mental deterioration and urinary incontinence, associated with ventriculomegaly and normal cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) pressure. The clinical presentation (triad) may be atypical or incomplete, or mimicked by other diseases, hence the need for supplementary tests, particularly to predict postsurgical...

Idiopathic normal-pressure hydrocephalus (iNPH) is a reversible syndrome of gait impairment, dementia, and incontinence that affects persons over 65 years of age.(1) Currently, the only effective treatment is surgical implantation of a shunt(2); however, the need for pharmacologic adjunctive treatments was noted at the 2005 NIH workshop on hydrocephalus.(3.)