Patients with significant memory problems are assessed
with a range of standard memory tests which generally demonstrate that, while
the individual can retain the information for a few seconds or minutes, within
half an hour, there has been substantial forgetting. However, a class of
patients has recently been reported in the literature who pass these standard
tests but complain of memory problems with the forgetting becoming obvious a
few days or weeks later. This disorder has been termed 'Accelerated Long-Term
Forgetting' or ALF and to date there is no clear clinical test to objectively
demonstrate and quantify this phenomenon. In 2010, we published a single case
study of a patient who shows a classic ALF profile and this new paper is a follow-up
one in which we describe a memory test that we have developed that captures our
patient's forgetting within an hour of first learning any information. This
work came out of Terry McGibbon's Graduate Diploma dissertation and is
potentially very important because due to time and financial constraints, most
clinicians might see a patient only once rather than being able to reevaluate
them a few days or weeks later. If our patient is representative of other ALF patients,
then with this new test, a clinician can therefore test for forgetting within
one clinical testing session. This may have significant implications for the
patient’s diagnosis and subsequent treatment.
Ashok Jansari
