World J Psychiatry Ment Health Res | Volume 3, Issue 1 | Case Report | Open Access
Ariadna E González1*, Laura Llansó2, Xavier Urra2, Eduard Parellada3
1Department of Psychiatry, University of Panamá, Panamá
2Department of Neurology, University of Barcelona, Spain
3Department of Psychiatry, University of Barcelona, Spain
*Correspondance to: Ariadna E González
Fulltext PDFIntroduction: Musical hallucinations which appear in elderly women may have different causes and few cases described in literature exist.
Methods: We present a 73 year-old female, with normal prior behavior and no past psychiatric history that sought medical help accompanied by her husband after experiencing auditory hallucinations. These had been appearing during three months as musical sounds and talking (megaphonia), with high emotional and behavioral impact.
Results: Neuroimaging showed chronic vascular lesions and the neuropsychological evaluation was pathological, with altered visioconstructive capacity, executive functions, planning, and new learning. Conclusions: this case highlights the significance of proceeding with an extra complementary clinical examination and the neuropsychological evaluation in elderly patients with verbal-musical hallucinations. Despite not having primary psychiatric history the Late-onset acute psychosis in this patient was induced by multiple vascular lesions. The hallucinatory symptoms of musical type are particular in this patient, being a sign of alert that urged the search for probable causes. In this case the combination of all the clinical exams, clinical tests, the neuro-imaging, the neuropsychological tests and the knowledge obtained from her clinical history lead us to the diagnosis of vascular cognitive impairment.
González AE, Llansó L, Urra X, Parellada E. Auditory Musical Hallucinations by Megaphone: As Debut of Late-Onset Acute Psychosis. World J Psychiatry Ment Health Res. 2019; 3(1): 1017.