PalJoey's diagnosis:
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What is Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome? Wernicke's encephalopathy is a degenerative brain disorder caused by the lack of thiamine (vitamin B1), which may result from alcohol abuse.
Symptoms include mental confusion, vision impairment, stupor, coma, hypothermia, hypotension, and ataxia.
Korsakoff's amnesic syndrome-a memory disorder-also results from a deficiency of thiamine, and is associated with alcoholism. The heart, vascular, and nervous system are involved.
Symptoms include amnesia, confabulation, attention deficit, disorientation, and vision impairment.
The main features of Korsakoff's amnesic syndrome are the impairments in acquiring new information or establishing new memories, and in retrieving previous memories.
Although Wernicke's and Korsakoff's may appear to be two different disorders, they are generally considered to be different stages of the same disorder, which is called Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome.
Korsakoff syndrome, or Korsakoff psychosis, tends to develop as Wernicke's symptoms diminish. It involves impairment of memory out of proportion to problems with other cognitive functions.
Patients often attempt to hide their poor memory by confabulating. The patient will create detailed, believable stories about experiences or situations to cover gaps in memory. This is not usually a deliberate attempt to deceive because the patient often believes what he is saying to be true. It can occur whether or not the thiamine deficiency was related to alcoholism and with other types of brain damage.