Senile dementia and healthy aging: a longitudinal CT study.

Volumetric indexes of cerebral atrophy obtained by using computed tomography (CT) were measured longitudinally in patients with senile dementia of the Alzheimer type (SDAT) and in healthy elderly control subjects. Measurements were made three times over a 51-month period. Of the original 44 patients with SDAT, five were available for CT examination at the last time of assessment (51 months); in contrast, 41 of the original 58 control subjects were still available for study at 51 months. As a group, scans of SDAT subjects showed greater atrophy than those of control subjects in all volumetric indexes at each time of testing and demonstrated greater progression of atrophy during the study period. However, the overlap of indexes between the patients with SDAT and the control subjects indicates that CT data cannot be used alone to predict the presence or progression of dementia in individual cases.