Variação temporal no desempenho em testes de memória em pacientes com doença vascular cerebral Temporal variation in memory tests performance in cerebral vascular disease patients

Abstract

Buscando adequar a avaliação neuropsicológica à organização temporal do organismo humano, avaliou-se o desempenho em testes de memória em 12 pacientes pós Doença Vascular Cerebral e 12 indivíduos controle, de ambos os sexos, com idade de 45 a 65 anos. Foram aplicados dois testes de memória com estímulos visuais (figuras) e dois com estímulos verbais (palavras), em 3 dias consecutivos por semana, às 08:00, 10:00 e 12:00 h na primeira semana e às 14:00 e 16:00 h na seguinte. Os pacientes apresentaram menor número de acertos do que os indivíduos controle em todos os testes aplicados (pThis study intended to investigate the performance in memory tests in order to adequate the neuropsychological evaluation to the temporal order of the human organism. Twelve cerebral vascular accident patients and 12 controls, of both sexes and 45-65 years old were studied. Two memory tests with visual stimuli (pictures) and two with verbal stimuli (words) were applied three times a day (08:00, 10:00 and 12:00 h) during the first week and twice a day (14:00 and 16:00 h) in the second week, during three consecutive days in two consecutive weeks. The patients showed lower scores than control subjects in all applied tests (p<0,05). The greater test sensitivity was at 14:00 h for the free recall test and at 16:00 h for recognition tests. According to these results, it is concluded that neuropsychological evaluations should be conducted preferably in the afternoon, as well for the first evaluation as for the re-evaluations.

Keywords

• Memória
• doença vascular cerebral
• variação temporal
• Memory
• cerebral vascular disease
• temporal variation