Frontal Behavioural Inventory in the differential diagnosis of dementia.

OBJECTIVE

To evaluate diagnostic properties of the Frontal Behavioural Inventory (FBI) in patients suffering from different forms of dementia.

METHODS

The FBI was administered with other psychometric tests investigating cognitive performances and behavioral scales to the caregivers of 35 patients with the frontal variant of frontotemporal dementia (fv-FTD), 22 patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and 15 with vascular dementia (VaD). All patients were comparable for degree of dementia severity and level of executive impairment.

RESULTS

The FBI showed high concurrent validity, internal consistency and good inter-rater and test-retest reliability. The discriminant validity was also very high. A new FBI cut-off score of 23 gave 97% sensitivity and 95% specificity in distinguishing fv-FTD from non-FTD patients. Conversely, the Neuropsychiatic Inventory (NPI) score was unable to differentiate fv-FTD from AD.

CONCLUSIONS

The FBI is a neurobehavioral tool suitable to distinguish fv-FTD from other forms of dementia also when data from cognitive testing or other behavioral scales fail to support the differential diagnosis.