Clinical profile of frontotemporal dementia: case series from a national reference neurological care center in Peru

Background: Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is a clinical syndrome characterized by progressive deterioration of behavior, language, executive function and, occasionally, motor dysfunction. In Latin America, many FTD patients are underrecognized or are diagnosed late in their disease course. There is limited information on clinical aspects of FTD in the Peruvian population. Objective: To describe the clinical characteristics of patients with frontotemporal dementia (FTD) evaluated at a national neurology referral center in Peru. Method: Retrospective study. We reviewed 161 clinical records, of which 24 met the diagnosis of probable FTD, and descriptive analysis was performed for each of the variants of FTD. Results: Twelve cases of behavioral variant FTD, nine of primary progressive aphasia non-fluent variant, and three of the semantic variants were included. The most frequent symptom in behavioral variant FTD was executive dysfunction (92%), while forced speech and impaired naming (100%) were more frequent in primary progressive aphasia non-fluent variant and primary progressive aphasia semantic variant, respectively. Depression and parkinsonism were present in 45 and 38%, respectively. Conclusion: Behavioral variant FTD was the most frequent clinical syndrome, and lack of empathy was the least reported nuclear symptom in this variant.