What is Dementia - Senior Attention

WHAT IS DEMENTIA?

The term dementia is used to describe a broad group of neurodegenerative diseases, characterized by a general decline in cognitive abilities that affect a person’s ability to perform everyday activities.

The most common type of dementia is Alzheimer’s Disease, but the group also includes diagnoses such as Lewy Bodies, vascular dementia, and frontotemporal dementia.

Despite the specific symptoms differing widely, all types of dementia manifest themselves in cognitive decline that ultimately results in fatal atrophy of the brain. Although research has identified some major risk factors (e.g., age and a family history of dementia), scientists do not yet know what causes dementia or why it manifests itself so differently from one patient to the next. Sadly, today there is yet no effective prevention or cure for dementia. The treatments that exist today will, at best, only delay some of the disease’s symptoms.

In most instances, dementia patients become symptomatic after age 65. However, a small segment of patients (known as “early onset”) will experience these symptoms as early as their 40’s or 50’s.

Because the age of onset and symptoms vary so much among patients, many scientists theorize that even within a specific type of dementia (like Alzheimer’s) there may exist several different variants of the disease.

For most dementia patients, their heart and other vital organs remain healthy well into the progression of the disease, resulting in a situation where patients are usually physically healthy and mobile, but require a lot of assistance with the basic activities of daily living. Because these patients are at risk of wandering, they represent a 24/7 on-duty responsibility for the family caregiver – most often the spouse.

Diagnosing Dementia

A diagnosis of dementia generally begins with an observation of cognitive decline – an observation usually made by the patient’s loved ones, not the patient himself. Early symptoms of cognitive decline may include some or all of the following:

Short-term memory loss
Difficulty in solving problems
Disorientation, getting lost
Difficulty in finding words during conversation

The presence of these symptoms does not by itself confirm a diagnosis of dementia. Diagnosis generally follows a neurologist conducting an in-person evaluation consisting of a review of symptoms, memory testing and a review of family history of dementia. If these analyses suggest that the subject is symptomatic for dementia (and age 55 or older), the neurologist may suggest further testing, specifically a PET scan of the brain and/or a blood test looking for blood-based biomarkers of dementia.

The blood-based test is a relatively new technology which measures the concentration in the blood of amyloid beta and phosphorylated tau. The detection of amyloid and tau in the brain are very strong indicators of Alzheimer’s Disease. However, the decision to participate in either the biomarker test or a PET scan should be made with caution:

Many researchers believe that the occurrence of amyloid in the brain may precede the development of dementia symptoms by many years. Thus, a positive test for excessive amyloid or tau in a person who is asymptomatic (i.e., has yet to develop symptoms of dementia) raises a question over which neurologists today are divided: at what point does a person actually have the disease – when the telltale amyloid and tau begin accumulating, or not until symptoms are confirmed present?

Receiving a diagnosis of dementia is life-changer: The positively tested person will from that point forward live with the heightened anxiety of wondering when the inevitable symptoms will appear – even though that day could be many years away, or may never come at all. For this reason, the test for blood-based biomarkers is recommended only when:

The patient is age 55 or older
Demetia symptoms are present, and
The physician needs help confirming that dementia is the likely cause of the symptoms.

The biomarker test is NOT recommended for younger patients or persons who currently have no dementia-like symptoms but “just want to know” if the biomarkers are present.

My loved one has been diagnosed with dementia – Now what?

The authors of this website have been there – sitting next to a spouse who hears for the first time, “You have Alzheimer’s Disease.” For many families, the diagnosis comes as a complete shock, especially when the news comes at age 65 or younger. Emotions run the gamut: disbelief, fear, denial, anger, resentment, panic, depression. Unless your family has experienced this diagnosis before, you are likely to begin frantically searching the internet to learn more about the disease – possibly hoping to learn that the diagnosis is wrong. In fact, one of those searches may have led you to this site itself.

If the dementia diagnosis is new for you and your loved one, many changes will be coming in the next few months and years. You have our compassion and empathy. The following website addresses the dynamics of receiving a dementia diagnosis and provides some practical advice for dealing with the news:

Click Here To Visit helpguide.org

Stages of Dementia

For both the patient and the family caregiver, dementia is a journey. And knowing in advance how the journey will end, the most common questions a family caregiver will ask the doctor are, “What stage are we in? What’s coming next? How close are we to the end?”

In attempts to answer these questions and prepare loved ones for what’s next, many experts in the disease have developed their own versions of a scale – a progression of stages with a list of symptoms that will be present during each of those stages. But these scales should all come with a warning: Dementia presents itself with a wide variety of symptoms, behaviors, and timetables. Some patients will never experience some of the symptoms listed in each stage – or perhaps will experience them in a different sequence. Do not expect your family’s journey to follow this scale precisely.

That said, an examination of these stages and symptoms can indeed help the family caregiver estimate the current mile marker on their loved one’s journey. And that can, in some instances, help prepare the caregiver for what’s coming next. So, for that reason, we present here links to five websites as a sample of some prominent scales from respected sources – each one an attempt to generalize the symptoms that a dementia patient will exhibit during their journey.

Alzheimer’s Association:

Click Here To Visit alz.org

Mayo Clinic:

Click Here To Visit mayoclinic.org

Fisher Center for Dementia Research Foundation:

Click Here To Visit alzinfo.org

Butler Hospital:

Click Here To Visit butler.org

Teepa Snow:

Click Here To Watch on youtube.com

Dementia Facts & Figures

The Alzheimer’s Association describes itself as the leading voluntary health organization in care, support, and research of Alzheimer’s and related types of dementia. This worldwide nonprofit organization publishes an annual report in which it summarizes the most significant statistics related to the disease. The following is a link to that report for the most recent year.

Although the report presents a lot of significant facts and figures, the saddest statistic is this: To date, no one has ever survived Alzheimer’s Disease.