A Subcortical Dementia
Binswanger's Disease is a rare form of dementia sometimes refered to as subcortical dementia. People who have Binswanger's Disease commonly have strokes from which they make partial recovery.
Causes of Binswanger's Disease
Binswanger's Disease is a slow progressive dementia that is characterized by damage to small penetrating blood vessels in the subcortical regions of the brain. These cerebrovascular lesions are deep in the white matter of the brain.
Age and Binswanger's Disease
Signs and symptoms of Binswanger's Disease usually begin after the age of 60 years of age.
Signs and symptoms of Binswanger's Disease
Binswanger's Disease is often associated with;
Binswanger disease can also include difficulty with walking, a lack of facial expression, speech difficulties, clumsiness, and incontinence.
Treatment of Binswanger's Disease
Treatment of Binswanger disease involves the attempt to control of symptoms. Medication is given for symptoms such as hypertension (high blood pressure) or hypotension (low blood pressure), for depression, or for heart arrhythmias.
Prognosis and Binswanger's Disease
There is no cure for Binswanger's Disease.
Other names for Binswanger's Disease
Binswanger's Disease is also known as subcortical arteriosclerotic encephalopathy
Ischemic periventricular leuko-ncephalopathy
Subcortical dementia
Who was Dr Binswanger?
Otto Binswanger was born in Münsterlingen, Switzerland, on October 14, 1852. Otto Binswanger studied medicine in Heidelberg, Strasbourg, and Zurich. At the age of 30, Dr Binswanger was appointed professor of psychiatry and director of the mental asylum in Jena, a position he held for 37 years between 1882 and 1919.
His scientific interests were broad and it is for his pathological histology studies attempting to define similarities and differences between progressive paralysis and other kinds of organic brain disease for which he is best known. In 1894, he described a new clinical and neuropathological picture that he termed "encephalitis subcorticalis chronica progressiva,". It is this disease that is named after him, Binswanger’s disease.
Otto Binswanger died in Kreuzlingen, Switzerland on July 15, 1929 at the age of 76.
