Alcohol related dementia: proposed clinical criteria.

Current diagnostic criteria for Alcohol Related Dementia (ARD) are based almost exclusively on clinical judgment. Moreover, there are no guidelines available to assist the clinician or the researcher in distinguishing Alcohol Related Dementia from other causes of dementia such as Alzheimer's Disease (AD). However, this distinction may have implications for the prognosis and treatment of patients. In this article, provisional diagnostic criteria for establishing a diagnosis of Alcohol Related Dementia are proposed for further study. The criteria are based on the available literature on the relationship between alcohol consumption and dementia and were modeled after existing diagnostic criteria for AD and Vascular Dementia. Validity of these criteria for distinguishing AD from ARD will require further study.