Mental status examination in Alzheimer's disease. The neuropsychologist's role.

The neuropsychologic consultant can offer an objective and comprehensive method of documenting the mental status of patients being evaluated for dementia. The neurobehavioral examination is an extension and elaboration of the bedside mental status examination, with added methods of controlling for various background factors that can influence performance on cognitive testing. In dementia, the cognitive findings appear to have a close association with the underlying neuropathologic changes and mortality. This makes the neurobehavioral examination useful in differentiating dementia from other neurologic and psychiatric conditions when the clinical diagnosis is uncertain.