A sudden disturbance of the memory is usually perceived as very threatening by patients and their relatives. In the case of “transient global amnesia”, it is a common neuropsychological phenomenon of unclear, presumably multifactorial etiology with typical clinical features and a good prognosis. It is characteristic that those affected repeatedly ask questions due to an anterograde memory disorder, additional (focal) neurological deficits are usually not found and, if they exist, give cause for further diagnostic clarification.
The "transient global amnesia" (TGA), which is also referred to as "anamnestic episode", is characterized by an acute disturbance of memory contents. The duration of this disorder affects a period of one to a maximum of 24 hours with symptoms lasting an average of six to eight hours. In the course of the acute illness there is anterograde amnesia, the retention period for new memory contents is reduced to 30 to 180 seconds.
The patients are always awake and easy to contact, orientation to the person is always given, but there is typically no orientation to the time and the situation. It is characteristic that the patients repeatedly ask (mostly the same) questions about, for example, situational circumstances, appear perplexed and very worried. In addition to anterograde amnesia, depending on the severity of the TGA, retrograde amnesia can also occur, i.e. older memory content cannot be accessed, although events from the more recent past are usually more difficult to access. However, the anamnestic disorder usually does not affect the performance of more complex, familiar actions,
Characteristically, those affected are inconspicuous in their clinical-neurological status, although unspecific symptoms such as vertigo, nausea or headache can occur. In the typical clinical course, the memory impairment regresses after a maximum of 24 hours, but mostly a permanent amnesia gap of several hours, which corresponds to the period of the acute illness, remains.
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