MEDICAL TERMS sometimes acquire a life of their own. The term leukoaraiosis (LA) was coined to avoid presumptions about etiology and neuropathology of a radiological phenomenon—white matter rarefaction found first on computed tomographic scans and later more profusely on magnetic resonance images.1 It was to be a
neutral term, exact enough to define white matter changes in the elderly or the demented, general enough that it serves as a description and a label, and demanding enough that it calls for a precise clinical and imaging description accompanied when possible by pathologic confirmation.1