In this report we describe an 82-year female with a longstanding anxiety disorder who developed severe psychogenic dysphagia, leading to hospitalization due to failure to thrive. We describe for the first time the use of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) to successfully manage a patient with pharmacological treatment resistant psychogenic dysphagia.

A recent paper, “Parkinson's disease mild cognitive impairment classifications and neurobehavioral symptoms” (McDermott et al., 2017), provides an interesting comparison of the influence of different criteria for Parkinson's disease with mild cognitive impairment (PD-MCI) on progression to dementia (PDD). Unfortunately, McDermott et al. (2017) incorrectly stated that “only 21% of PD-MCI participants (identified with a 1.5 SD cut-off) converted to PDD within four years” (p.6) in our study (Wood et al., 2016). However, the important point made by Wood et al. (2016) was that the proportion of conversions to PDD was 51% when the PD-MCI diagnosis required a minimum of two 1.5 SD impairments within any single cognitive domain, whereas additional PD-MCI patients classified with one impairment at 1.5 SD in each of the two domains (but never two impairments in the same domain) had a non-significant risk of dementia relative to non-MCI patients (11% vs. 6% converted, respectively). Our PDD conversion rate was 38% when combining both 1.5 SD criteria (21/56 PD-MCI patients vs. 4/65 non-MCI patients converted); McDermott et al. (2017) found a 42% conversion rate over three years for similarly described PD-MCI patients (10/24 PD-MCI patients vs. 0/27 non-MCI patients converted). Our study was also part of a multinational study (n = 467) showing that PD-MCI has predictive validity beyond known demographic and PD-specific factors of influence (Hoogland et al., 2017). All three studies found that multiple cognitive domain impairments are common in PD-MCI. Nonetheless, the research community needs to clarify the association between PD-MCI subtypes and, especially, the optimal cognitive markers for dementia risk in PD patients.

We read the article on “‘I can't do this alone’: a study on foreign domestic workers providing long-term care for frail seniors at home” with a great interest (Tam et al., 2017). Tam et al. (2017) noted that “[i]mproving FDWs' access to training courses in eldercare, providing them with more emotional support, engaging employers to create healthy caregiving spaces at home, and improving access to senior care services can be helpful.” This finding is very interesting. In fact, FDW service is common in several countries and approved for usefulness (Østbye et al., 2013). Of interest, the FDWs are usually from the poor developing countries. It is no doubt that the FDWs usually have low education level. Therefore, the education for them has to be carefully considered. We would like to share ideas from Thailand, where several FDW from nearby countries are currently employed. At present, there are many local schools offering inexpensive short course training on home care for elderly people and this becomes a popular course for FDW to attend. Nowadays, before employment, the employers usually ask for certification for verification of the proficiency of the FDW.

We recruited eight general practice (GP) practices for a pilot cluster randomized controlled trial (RCT) of a digital versatile disc/leaflet encouraging South Asian people to seek timely help for memory problems. Primary outcomes were feasibility (proportion of patients expressing interest, consenting) and acceptability. Seventy-eight of one hundred and two (76%) potential participants consented; 76/78 (97%) were followed-up. Thirty-seven of forty-one (90%) receiving the intervention rated this acceptable. Only 17/41 (41%) accessed it; they appeared then to be more likely to seek timely help. The intervention was acceptable and feasible but a full-scale RCT would be very expensive. It may be proportionate to make this intervention available without a full-scale RCT.

We read the paper by Soysal et al. (2017) with interest as we have experience of both the Attended With (AW) and the Head-Turning Sign (HTS) in a neurology-led cognitive disorders clinic.

Schizophrenia guidelines list family interventions as an efficient means in reducing relapses. Interventions aim to help families cope with their relative's problems more effectively, provide support and education, and reduce levels of distress and improve the family communication (see deHaan et al., 2002).

We thank Ms. Horne et al. for the clarification of our misquoting of their paper (Wood et al., 2016). They clarify that 21% of their overall sample of patients with Parkinson's disease (PD-MCI) converted to dementia in over four years, which we erroneously attributed to the mild cognitive impairment (MCI) group in our discussion (McDermott et al., 2017). This was virtually identical to our overall conversion rate of 20%. Their conversion rate of patients with PD-MCI, as defined by two cognitive tests impaired (1.5 SD) within a single cognitive domain, was 51%, whereas the conversion rate was 38% when the PD-MCI group included patients with impairment within and between cognitive domains. Their conversion rates are similar to our rate of 42% (as defined with 1.5 SD impairment within or across domains) and the rate of 39% in a study with five-years of follow-up of incident cases (Pedersen et al., 2017). Our overall conversion occurred over a slightly shorter time span. In addition to conversion rates, all the studies acknowledge that some patients can revert to normal cognitive status, which varies based on classification criteria and length of follow-up. Comparable conversion across studies using similar criteria is reassuring and can encourage planning of targeted interventions (Hoogland et al., 2017).

We read with interest the comment by Williamson and Larner on our recent study titled “Attended With and Head-Turning Sign can be clinical markers of cognitive impairment in older adults” (Soysal et al., 2017). After the authors read the study, they re-examined their data according to the presence of Attended With (AW) and Head-Turning Sign (HTS), and compared their results with ours (Larner, 2014). Then, they found that while the sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, and negative predictive value of AW in detecting cognitive impairment were similar to ours, HTS had lower sensitivity (80.95% vs. 65.0%) and higher specificity (64.7% vs. 95.0%) than our results (Larner, 2014; Soysal et al., 2017). We think that some methodological and cultural differences may explain these discrepancies between the two.