Bedside screening for executive dysfunction in patients with subcortical ischemic vascular disease.

Objective: We investigated several executive bedside tests for their effectiveness in the routine clinical diagnostics of dysexecutive syndrome in subcortical ischemic vascular disease (SIVD).

Methods: Five executive tests, CLOX, the Tower of London (ToL), a cognitive estimation test (CET), a verbal fluency test, and the Five-Point Test, were examined in 17 patients with marked cerebral microangiopathy in cranial MRI and clinical symptoms of SIVD. The test accuracy for discriminating the patients from 17 healthy comparison subjects closely matched for age, gender and level of education was determined.