Dementia Flashcards
What is the definition of dementia?
•Progressive cognitive decline
•The cognitive or behavioural impairment involves a minimum of two of the following:
- memory
- executive function
- language
- apraxia/visuospatial
•Interferes with the ability to function at work or at usual activities and represents a decline from previous levels of functioning and performing
•Is not explained by delirium or major psychiatric disorder
•In summary, severe, acquired and must involve more than one brain region
What are the mimics of dementia?
- Vascular disease including stroke
- Trauma
- Cancer
- major mental health issues
What comes under ‘memory’ in a cognitive history?
•Impaired ability to acquire and remember new information
•Symptoms include:
- Repetitive questions or conversations
- misplacing personal belongings
- forgetting events or appointments
- getting lost on a familiar route
What comes under ‘executive function’ in a cognitive history?
•Impaired reasoning and handling of complex tasks, poor judgement
•Symptoms include:
- poor understanding of safety risks
- inability to manage finances
- poor decision making ability
- inability to plan complex or sequential activities
What comes under ‘visuospatial’ in a cognitive history?
•Impaired visuospatial abilities
•Symptoms include:
- inability to recognise faces or common objects or to find objects in direct view despite good acuity
- inability to operate simple implements or to orient clothing to the body
What comes under ‘language’ in the cognitive history?
•Impaired language functions (speaking, reading, writing)
•Symptoms include:
- difficulty thinking of common words while speaking
- hesitations
- speech
- spelling
- writing errors
Name 2 cognitive assessments
- Folstein MMSE (30)
* Addenbrookes cognitive assessment (100)
What does addenbrookes examine?
- Executive function
- Memory
- Language
- Visuospatial
What is the purpose of addenbrookes?
- Assess severity
* Assess pattern of impairment
What are the facets of executive function?
- Behaviour aspect- orbitofrontal
- Attention/working memory - dorsolateral prefrontal cortex
- Motivation/goal driven - anterior cingulate
What are the symptoms of dementia affecting the orbitofrontal cortex?
- disinhibited
* Loss of social awareness
What is the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex responsible for?
- Working memory
- Cognitive estimates
- Planning
- Understanding proverbs
What is attention/concentration?
Component of consciousness which allows filtering of information to allow one to focus on a particular stimuli
How can you test attention/concentration/orientation?
- Orientation: day/date/month/year/season, which building/floor/town/county/country
- 3 words, repeat back and memorise and ask again 5 minutes later
- serial 7s
How can you test executive function?
- Trail making
- look for regional atrophy on MRI
- Proverbs, verbal fluency, estimates and planning