A patient presents with memory difficulties following a known physical illness or injury. Before revealing the answer, decide how you would assess whether this is organic amnesia.

Establish the specific pattern of the memory loss, since this reflects the nature and course of the underlying disturbance: a brief gap around a discrete injury, a persisting inability to form new memories, or a widening loss of older memories over years. Assess whether personal identity is affected, since it is typically less affected than in dissociative amnesia even when the memory disturbance itself is severe. Look for other neurological or cognitive findings relevant to the underlying cause, and take care not to diagnose a discrete amnestic state when other signs of broader cognitive impairment, as in dementia, or clouded consciousness, as in delirium, are also present, since these require their own separate recognition.