Frontotemporal dementia: Assessment, management and considerations for culturally diverse and low resource settings

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Educational Objectives
  1. Explain how to distinguish behavioural-variant frontotemporal dementia from other dementia and psychiatric syndromes
  2. Discuss how bilingualism can influence the clinical presentation of primary progressive aphasia
  3. Describe how to approach a diagnostic assessment for the most common frontotemporal dementia subtypes

 

Course Information
Target Audience:Intermediate
Availability:Date Available: 2021-09-10
  You may obtain CE for this webinar at any time.
Offered for CE Yes
Cost Members $20
  Non-Members $30
Refund Policy This webinar is not eligible for refunds
CE Credits 1.0
Abstract
Frontotemporal dementia is a relatively rare dementia syndrome characterised by insidious and progressive changes in behaviour and personality. Currently, no disease-modifying treatment or cure exists, and differential diagnosis is challenging. In this webinar we will provide an overview of current clinical recommendations for the diagnosis of behavioural-variant frontotemporal dementia, with a focus on differentiation from Alzheimer’s disease and from primary psychiatric disorders. We will also outline assessment approaches for the diagnosis of primary progressive aphasias. We will discuss recent studies examining cross-linguistic studies in primary progressive aphasia and how bilingualism can influence the clinical phenotype. How to approach diagnosis in a low resource setting will be considered. Finally, we will provide an overview of available management and treatment options.
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Disclosures
None

Author(s)
  • A/Prof Fiona Kumfor  holds a Masters of Clinical Neuropsychology (Macquarie University) and a PhD in Neuroscience (University of New South Wales). She is currently a National Health Medical Research Council Career Development Fellow (2019-2023), Associate Professor in the School of Psychology, University of Sydney and registered Clinical Neuropsychologist. A/Prof Kumfor has >70 publications, published in high-impact, peer-reviewed journals, which have been cited >2000 times and her h-index is 28. She has received >$3.4M in competitive funding to date. She currently leads a team of 8 researchers and is Director of the Sydney Neuropsychology Clinic which aims to improve assessment and treatment of acquired neurological disorders taking a transdiagnostic approach.

  • Dr. Ratnavalli Ellajosyula is a consultant neurologist and specialist in Cognitive Neurology. She obtained a fellowship in Cognitive Neurology under Prof. John Hodges, one of the world’s leading experts in FTD. She started the first memory clinic in India and currently heads a multidisciplinary cognitive disorders clinic in several centres in India. She has extensive clinical experience of more than two decades in diagnosing and managing patients with FTD. She was the PI on two research projects on ‘genetics of FTD’ and ‘bilingualism and PPA’. She has published several important papers on different aspects of FTD. Her first author paper on ‘Prevalence of FTD’ in Neurology has more than 1000 citations. Her recent paper on language loss in bilingual semantic dementia is the largest series so far reported. She has also authored a paper on neuropsychiatric features. She was a co-author on a collaborative paper in Brain journal on guidelines for differentiating FTD from primary psychiatric disorders. She is now leading the section on ‘clinical presentation’ of a multi-author FTD diversity white paper, a collaborative effort of the FTD and diversity Professional Interest groups (PIA) of the Alzheimer Association. She is a member of the International Neuropsychiatric FTD consortium and is a steering committee member of the cognition professional interest area (PIA) of the Alzheimer’s Association.
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