Differentiating Alzheimer's disease and frontotemporal dementia: receiver operator characteristic curve analysis of four rating scales.

Alzheimer's disease and frontotemporal dementia are two of the most common types of degenerative dementia. In conjunction with a complete neuropsychiatric examination, the Executive Interview, Mini-Mental State Exam, Alzheimer's Disease Scale, Pick's Disease Scale and the Informant-Based Questionnaire have been used to distinguish between these two disorders on clinical grounds. In a review of two studies, scores from these rating scales are subjected to receiver operator characteristic curve analysis to determine the cut-off value for each scale which yields the highest sensitivity and specificity with regard to differentiating between Alzheimer's disease and frontotemporal dementia. Finally, the Informant-Based Questionnaire is discussed and compared to each rating scale to demonstrate the important features and limitations of each.