Organic Brain Syndrome

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.
Please discuss this issue on the talk page or replace this tag with a more specific message.
This article has been tagged since August 2006.

Organic Brain Syndrome is a general term referring to many acute and chronic physical disorders that cause impaired mental function. It does not usually include psychiatric disorders. Though OBS is a common diagnosis in the elderly, it is related to disease processes and is not an inevitable part of aging.

Acute Organic Brain Syndrome is a temporary state of mental impairment caused by intoxication, overdose or infection.

Disorders that cause injury or damage to the brain and contribute to OBS include, but are not limited to:
Alzheimer's Disease
Concussion
Encephalitis
Epilepsy
Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder
Hypoxia
Intoxication/Overdose caused by Drug abuse or Alcoholism
Intracranial Hemorrhage/Trauma
Korsakoff Syndrome
Meningitis
Stroke/Transient ischemic attack(TIA)
Withdrawal from Drugs/Alcohol

Other conditions that may be related to organic brain syndrome include: clinical depression, neuroses, and psychoses, which may occur simultaneously with the OBS.

1 Symptoms
2 Treatment
3 Other names
4 References

[edit] Symptoms

Symptoms of OBS vary with the disease that is responsible. However, the more common symptoms of OBS are confusion; impairment of memory, judgement, and intellectual function; dementia; delirium and agitation. Often these symptoms are contributed to psychiatric illness, which causes a difficulty in diagnosis.