抄録
Woman passing through middle age experience hormonal disorders due to the menopause and other somatic changes. These heighen their awareness of their age just at the time when they also experience such other major changes as the marriage or departure from the home of their children and the retirement of their husbands.
We encountered a 62-year-old woman who had developed depression because her husband, although an able man, was being treated coldly by his company immediately prior to his retirement. She complained of saliva-related cenesthopathy. She appeared abnormal in speech and behavior, and the dentist had difficulty in treating her.
Thereafter, the mental symptoms were treated by the department of psychiatry and dental treatment was also continued, but her symptoms increasingly became suggestive of late schizophrenia. Ultimately, she was found to have predominant extrapyramidal-system symptoms, associated with difficulty in walking, and dysphasia. Atrophy of the frontal and temporal lobes was detected, and Pick's disease was diagnosed.
With the rising average age of the population, dental treatment provides an opportunity for detecting abnormalities in patients, which may contribute to the identification of occult disease. In this regard, this case was instructive for future treatment.
