BACKGROUND: Awareness of disease is a concept related to the recognition of deficits, lack of knowledge of cognitive deficits or, also, to the awareness of deficits in activities of daily living in Alzheimer's disease. OBJECTIVE: This review aimed at comparing definitions and etiological hypotheses for awareness of disease in Alzheimer's disease. METHOD: Search of prospective, retrospective, longitudinal, and cross-sectional articles at ISI, Medline, Lilacs and Scielo databases from 1984 to 2004 using the key-words awareness of deficit, awareness of disease, insight and Alzheimer's disease. Articles were examined to evaluate the definition of awareness of disease and divided by areas according to the objective. RESULTS: The concepts of awareness of disease, awareness of deficit, awareness of cognitive deficit, insight, self-awareness and anosognosia were used as synonymous in the 43 articles, regardless of the organic, psychosocial explanations and of the differences of perception between patients and family. CONCLUSION: Awareness of disease may be defined as the ability to notice changes in the self-consciousness and in the daily activities due to the disease. This definition may be operationalized and can help the examination of awareness of disease in dementia.
Alzheimer disease; dementia; awareness of disease; awareness of deficit; systematic review
