Intellectual impairment and cerebral lesions in multiple cerebral infarcts. A clinical-computed tomography study.

The relation between cerebral lesions studied by computed tomography and the dementia syndrome has been evaluated in 40 patients with multi-infarct dementia, in 44 nondemented subjects with multiple infarcts, and in 30 controls matched for age and sex. Our study of the volume of ischemic lesions showed a slightly greater loss of cerebral substance in patients with multi-infarct dementia than in nondemented subjects with multiple infarcts, particularly in subjects with unilateral focal lesions and in patients with bilateral multiple cortical and subcortical lesions. The dementia syndrome was significantly associated with multiple locations of lesions in the thalamic and cortical areas supplied by the middle cerebral arteries. Moreover, patients with the dementia syndrome showed a significantly higher degree of cerebral atrophy than nondemented subjects and controls as evaluated by measurements of ventricular size, area of ventricular space, and area of subarachnoid space.