About our e-newsletters
- Free e-newsletters
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- We do not share your e-mail address
Housecall, our weekly general-interest e-newsletter, keeps you up to date on a wide variety of health topics with timely, reliable, practical information, recipes, blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts and more. Our biweekly topic-specific e-newsletters also include blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts, and other useful information that will help you manage your health.
Housecall Archives
Mayo Clinic Housecall
Stay up to date on the latest health information.
What you get
- Free weekly e-newsletter
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- Recipes, tools and other helpful information
- We do not share your e-mail address
Tests and diagnosis
By Mayo Clinic staffFor the doctor to make a diagnosis of Lewy body dementia, you must have experienced a progressive decline in your ability to think, as well as two of the following:
- Fluctuating alertness and cognition
- Repeated visual hallucinations
- Parkinson's-like symptoms
No single test can diagnose Lewy body dementia. Instead, doctors diagnose the disease through a process of elimination — ruling out other diseases and conditions that may cause similar signs and symptoms. Tests may include:
Neurological exam
As part of your physical exam, your doctor may also check for signs of Parkinson's disease, strokes, tumors or other medical conditions that can impair brain function as well as physical function. The neurological exam may test:
- Reflexes
- Eye movements
- Balance
- Sense of touch
Assessment of mental abilities
A short form of this type of test, which assesses your memory and thinking skills, can be done in less than 10 minutes in your doctor's office. Longer forms of neuropsychological testing can take several hours. Your results are then compared with those of people from a similar age and education level. This can help distinguish normal from abnormal cognitive aging, and may help identify patterns in cognitive functions that provide clues to the underlying condition.
Lab tests
Simple blood tests can rule out physical problems that can affect brain function, such as vitamin B-12 deficiency or an underactive thyroid gland.
Electroencephalogram (EEG)
If your confusion comes and goes, your doctor may suggest an EEG. This test can help determine if your symptoms are better explained by seizures or Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a rare, degenerative brain disorder that leads to dementia. This painless test records the electrical activity in your brain via wires attached to your scalp.
Brain scans
Your doctor may order an MRI or CT scan to check for evidence of stroke or bleeding, and to rule out the possibility of a tumor.
- NINDS Dementia with Lewy bodies information page. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/dementiawithlewybodies/dementiawithlewybodies.htm. Accessed July 6, 2010.
- Hake AM, et al. Clinical features and diagnosis of dementia with Lewy bodies. http://www.uptodate.com/home/index.html. Accessed July 6, 2010.
- Hake AM, et al. Epidemiology, pathology and pathogenesis of dementia with Lewy bodies. http://www.uptodate.com/home/index.html. Accessed July 6, 2010.
- What is LBD? Lewy Body Dementia Association. http://www.lbda.org. Accessed July 6, 2010.
- Hake AM, et al. Prognosis and treatment of dementia with Lewy bodies. http://www.uptodate.com/home/index.html. Accessed July 6, 2010.
- Dementia: Hope through research. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/dementias/detail_dementia.htm?css=print. Accessed July 6, 2010.
- Caring for Alzheimer's. Alzheimer's Association. http://www.alz.org/living_with_alzheimers_caring_for_alzheimers.asp. Accessed July 6, 2010.
Find Mayo Clinic on