Dementia refers to progressive loss of memory and decline in cognitive function due to diseases or injuries. The early symptoms and signs of dementia are very vague and often mistaken for symptoms of normal aging. As dementia progresses, the patient loses the ability to think, to memorize and to rationalize.
Identification
The most common symptoms of dementia are memory loss, confusion and personality change. The patients with dementia appear to lack emotions and withdraw into their own world.
Dementia patients also exhibit neuropsychiatric symptoms, such as aggression, hallucinations, depression, sleep disturbances, wandering and delusions.
Patients at advanced stage of dementia will not able to speak and lose control of bladder and bowel movements. At this stage, they have to depend on others for full-time care.
If a person has the following signs, you should contact his health care provider to confirm whether he has developed dementia:
+ forgetting appointments frequently, inability to recall a recent event,
+ forgetting where he put things,
+ troubled carrying out routine and familiar tasks,
+ difficulty in speaking coherently, and unable to remember simple words,
+ losing interests and initiatives,
+ difficulty in making decision and right judgment.
Types
Dementia is often classified into cortical dementia and subcortical dementia.
Cortial dementia is associated with diseases affecting the cerebral cortex, which is the outer layers of the brain. The cerebral cortex controls several cognitive functions including memory and language. The most common forms of cortical demential include Alzheimer disease, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and vascular dementia.
Subcortical dementia is caused by the malfunction of the brain beyond the cortex. Patients with subcortical dementia may not experience memory loss or language disabilities. In general, they exhibit personality changes, and short attention spans and are slow to respond. The most common forms of subcortical dementias are Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease and AIDS dementia complex.
Size
In the world, there are about 24 million people with dementia. In the United States, there are about 4.5 million people diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. The risk of developing Alzheimer's disease is 10% for people aged over 65 and 50% for people aged over 85.
Effects
On average, a person diagnosed with Alzheimer's will expect to live 8 to 9 more years. Dementia is a very costly disease. In the United States, the annual cost of Alzheimer's disease alone is approaching $100 billion. The annual cost of care for an individual with Alzheimer's disease depends on the severity of the disease and ranges from $30,000 to $65,000.
Expert Insight
Our understanding of the pathology of dementia, in particular, Alzheimer's disease has increased significantly over the past two decades. It is likely that treatment of Alzheimer's disease will have multiple therapeutic targets, similar to treatment of coronary heart disease.
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