Case Study. Present a case study about a patient with a memory impairment as a neuropsychologists. Diagnose the patient and provide rehabilitative suggestions.

Case studies

This exercise requires all your imaginative capacity and a lot of effort but I hope it is going to be both formative and amusing. You are going to present a case study about a patient with a memory impairment. In this assignment you are the neuropsychologists who need to diagnose the patient and provide rehabilitative suggestions. Case presentations will be done in group of 3-4 people using PPT presentations (or any other presentation software).
Ideally, the presentation should be organized as follows:
1. Case introduction
First, describe the patient and the reason behind the visit. It is often useful to use the patient’s own words. Next, we introduce the important information that we obtained from our history-taking. We don’t need to include every detail – just the information that helped us to settle on our diagnosis. I suggest avoiding complex cases or, at least, to avoid symptoms and signs that could make the characterization of the disorder too confusing (e.g. a patient can have both a memory disorder and auditory hallucinations following a brain disorder but I would avoid mentioning the second symptom if you want to characterize a memory disorder). If you find a neuro-radiological exam (e.g. MRI, TAC, PET) of the disorder you are presenting, please show it to the class and highlight the damaged area (try looking on published single case papers).
2. Assessment
A brief description of the cognitive assessment conducted on the patient. Describe at least 1 neuropsychological test you conducted on the patient and the reason of your choice.
3. Differential diagnosis
List other conditions that present similar clinical features and exclude them on the basis of your clinical reasoning process.
At this point, ask your audience what memory component is afflicted and let them guess which disorder you are presenting.
4. Overview of the diagnosed disorder
Now that the diagnosis has been made, provide a brief excursus of the disorder (History, etiology, epidemiology, treatments and usual outcome).