Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome
| Classification according to ICD-10 | |
|---|---|
| F10.6 | Mental and behavioral disorders caused by alcohol Amnestic syndrome - Korsakoff psychosis caused by alcohol or other psychotropic substances - Unspecified Korsakoff syndrome |
| E51.2 | Wernicke encephalopathy |
| ICD-10 online (WHO version 2019) | |
The term Wernicke-Korsakow syndrome (after Carl Wernicke and Sergei Korsakow ) summarizes two clinical pictures with different symptoms but the same history of development ( pathogenesis ), namely that
- Korsakow syndrome / Korsakow psychosis as well as the
- Wernicke encephalopathy / Wernicke syndrome
The combination of both clinical pictures is known in chronically alcoholic people, but both can also occur independently of one another.
Characteristic of the Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome are punctiform hemorrhages and growths of the vascular wall cells without inflammatory infiltrations, especially in the mesencephalic aqueduct between the III. and IV. ventricle .
The acute phase often turns into a Korsakoff psychosis - the patients suffer from retrograde amnesia and anterograde amnesia , i. That is, they are neither able to create new memory contents nor to retrieve stored contents. They also show confabulations ( gaps in memory are “filled” with fantasized events).
Mostly there is a thiamine (vitamin B1) deficiency with malnutrition ; Absorption disorders or one-sided carbohydrate nutrition do the rest.
See also
literature
- P. Calabrese, D. Wolter, H. Förstl: Wernicke-Korsakow syndrome and other amnesic syndromes. In: H. Förstl (Ed.): Dementia in theory and practice. 3rd, updated and revised Edition. Springer, Berlin / Heidelberg 2011, ISBN 978-3-642-19795-6 , pp. 173-189.
- R. Mancinelli, M. Ceccanti: Biomarkers in alcohol misuse: their role in the prevention and detection of thiamine deficiency . In: Alcohol & Alcoholism . tape 44 , no. 2 , 2009, p. 177-182 , doi : 10.1093 / alcalc / agn117 , PMID 19147797 .
