A method for clinical examination of patients with dementia, stepwise comparative status analysis (STEP), is presented. It combines psychiatric and neurologic status examination methods to identify certain common dementia symptoms by which the patient's regional brain symptom profile can be determined. Fifty status variables (items) are estimated with respect to occurrence and severity. The analysis is performed in three steps. The scores on the 'primary' variables reflect observations of single dementia symptoms. These scores form the basis for the assessment of the 'compound' variables, which in turn form the basis for evaluation of the 'complex' variables, one of which describes the patient's regional (predominant) brain syndrome (subcortical, frontosubcortical, frontal, frontoparietal, parietal, or global). In 96 mildly and moderately demented inpatients, the global (42%) and frontosubcortical (31%) were the most common. Ninety-one percent of the patients with vascular dementia had a predominant frontal and/or subcortical symptomatology.