DEMENTIA - A MEDICAL DISORDER

Hello friends,I would like to tell you all about a disorder called as DEMENTIA.Dementia, a syndrome with many causes, affects >5 million people in
the United States and results in a total annual health care cost between
$157 and $215 billion. Dementia is defined as an acquired deteriora-
tion in cognitive abilities that impairs the successful performance of
activities of daily living. Episodic memory, the ability to recall events
specific in time and place, is the cognitive function most commonly
lost; 10% of persons age >70 years and 20–40% of individuals age >85
years have clinically identifiable memory loss. In addition to memory,
dementia may erode other mental faculties, including language,
visuospatial, praxis, calculation, judgment, and problem-solving abili-
ties. Neuropsychiatric and social deficits also arise in many dementia
syndromes, manifesting as depression, apathy, anxiety, hallucinations,
delusions, agitation, insomnia, sleep disturbances, compulsions, or
disinhibition. The clinical course may be slowly progressive, as in
Alzheimer’s disease (AD); static, as in anoxic encephalopathy; or
may fluctuate from day to day or minute to minute, as in dementia
with Lewy bodies. Most patients with AD, the most prevalent form of
dementia, begin with episodic memory impairment, although in other
dementias, such as frontotemporal dementia, memory loss is not typi-
cally a presenting feature.
THE CAUSES OF DEMENTIA
The single strongest risk factor for dementia is increasing age. The
prevalence of disabling memory loss increases with each decade over
age 50 and is usually associated with the microscopic changes of AD
at autopsy. Yet some centenarians have intact memory function and
no evidence of clinically significant dementia. Whether dementia is an
inevitable consequence of normal human aging remains controversial.The frequency
of each condition depends on the age group under study, access of the
group to medical care, country of origin, and perhaps racial or ethnic
background. AD is the most common cause of dementia in Western
countries, accounting for more than half of all patients. Vascular dis-
ease is considered the second most frequent cause for dementia and is
particularly common in elderly patients or populations with limited
access to medical care, where vascular risk factors are undertreated.
Often, vascular brain injury is mixed with neurodegenerative disor-
ders, making it difficult, even for the neuropathologist, to estimate the
contribution of cerebrovascular disease to the cognitive disorder in
an individual patient.
In a study of 1000 persons attending a memory disorders clinic,
19% had a potentially reversible cause of the cognitive impairment and
23% had a potentially reversible concomitant condition that may have
contributed to the patient’s impairment. The three most common poten-
tially reversible diagnoses were depression, normal pressure hydroceph-
alus (NPH), and alcohol dependence; medication side effects are also
common and should be considered in every patient.
Try to be nice with people with Dementia..that's all they need.
Source : HARRISONS PRINCIPLE OF INTERNAL MEDICINE (every medicos Bible😉)
Thanks for reading.Iam interested in sharing many other disorders information to enlighten steemit community.Have a nice day all. Yours @sonuuday.