Neurocognitive Disorders Flashcards
What are two types of causes of neurocognitive disorders?
Acquired and degenerative causes
What are acquired causes?
Causes of neurocognitive disorders that are related to illness, diseases, traumatic brain injury, drugs/alcohol, and chronic stress.
What are degenerative causes?
Causes of neurocognitive disorders that have no cure such as HIV+, Alzheimer’s disease, and Parkinson’s
Define neurocognitive disorder
A disorder marked by a significant decline in at least one area of cognitive functioning such as memory, attention, or visual perception. It can worsen steadily over time.
Define delirium
A rapidly developing disturbance in attention or awareness
What are characteristics of delirium?
- Develops over hours or days
- Most common in elderly people
What is delirium caused by?
- Infections
- Poor nutrition
- Head injuries
- Stress
- Underlying condition
How is delirium treated?
- Underlying condition
- Antipsychotic medication
What are symptoms of delirium?
- Misinterpretations
- Hallucinations
- Illusions
- Extreme trouble focusing attention
- Disturbances in sleep/wake schedule
- Speech is rambling and incoherent
- Disorientation
- Memory impairments
- Mood swings
What is a common issue in diagnosing delirium?
Detection of delirium is important but is often missed and if it untreated further cognitive decline and mortality can occur
What is the prevalence of delirium in the community?
Only 1-2% of people in the community overall have it but it increases with age as 83% of all individuals have it at the end of their life
What are characteristics of normal aging and when do they occur?
- Intelligence remains intact
- Normal performance on Mental Status Exam
- Occasional complaints of memory loss
- Occurs at age 60 or 70
What is major neurocognitive cognitive disorder (dementia)?
Individual displays substantial decline in at least one cognitive area which interferes with that individual’s ability to be independent
How is mild cognitive impairment and dementia detected?
SLUMS (Saint Louis University Mental Status)
What is mild neurocognitive disorder?
Individual displays modest decline in at least one cognitive area which does not interfere with that individual’s ability to be independent or activities of daily living (they might need strategies to maintain these). These cognitive deficits are not due to another psychological disorder.
What are the differences between dementia and depression?
Dementia: 1. Even progression over the years 2. Attempts to hide memory loss 3. Worse later in the day 4. Unaware or minimizes disability 5. Rarely abuses drugs Depression: 1. Uneven progression over the years 2. Complains of memory loss 3. Often worse in the morning and lessens as the day goes on 4. Aware of, exaggerates disability 5. May abuse alcohol
What are differences between dementia and delirium?
Dementia:
1. Gradual deterioration of abilities
2. Deficits in memory of recent events
3. Caused by disease processes that are influencing the brain
4. Irreversible
5. Treatment offers minimal benefit
6. Prevalence increases with age
Delirium:
1. Rapid onset
2. Trouble concentrating
3. Secondary to a medical condition
4. Fluctuations over the course of the day
5. Reversible if underlying condition is treated
6. Prevalent in both young and old people
What is differential diagnosis?
The process of making a diagnostic decision in which a clinician rules out the other diagnoses in favor of one diagnosis
What are complex attentional impairments in major neurocognitive disorder?
A patient has increased difficulty with …
- multiple stimuli (TV, radio, and people talking)
- holding new information in mind (remembering phone numbers and reporting what was just said)
- thinking (takes longer than usual and has to be simplified)
What are complex attentional impairments in mild neurocognitive disorder?
- Normal tasks take longer than before with errors
- Thinking is easier when not doing other things such as listening to the radio or TV
What are learning and memory impairments in major neurocognitive disorder?
The patient …
- Repeats themselves in conversation
- Cannot keep track of short list of items while shopping
- Requires frequent reminders to complete the task at hand
What are learning and memory impairments in mild neurocognitive disorder?
The person …
- Has difficulty recalling recent events
- Needs occasional reminders or re-reading to keep track of characters in a movie
- Occasionally say the same things to the same person
- Loses track of whether bills have been paid
What are perceptual-motor impairments in major neurocognitive disorder?
Patient …
- Significant difficulty with previously familiar activities (using tools)
- More confused at dusk when shadows start to appear
What are perceptual-motor impairments in mild neurocognitive disorder?
The person …
- Relies more on maps for directions
- Uses notes and follows other to get to a new place
- Finds themselves lost when not on task
- Less precise in parking
- Spends greater effort on spatial tasks
What are language impairments in major neurocognitive disorder?
Patients…
- Significant difficulties with either expressive or receptive language
- May not recall names of closer friends
- Grammar errors
Automatic speech precede mutism
What are language impairments in mild neurocognitive disorder?
Person…
- Has word-finding difficulty
- Substitute general for specific terms (names of people)
- Smaller grammatical errors
What are examples of mild and major neurocognitive disorder?
- Alzheimer’s disease
- Frontotemporal lobar degeneration
- Lewy body disease
- Vascular disease
- Traumatic brain injury
- Substance/medication use
- HIV infection
- Prion disease
- Parkinson’s disease
- Huntington’s disease
- Multiple etiologies
What are the top two causes of major neurocognitive disorder?
- Alzheimer’s diease
2. Stroke
Who was Alzheimer’s disease described by?
Alois Alzheimer
What is Alzheimer’s disease?
- irreversible brain tissue deterioration
- death usually occurs within 12 years
What are characteristics/symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease that are noticeable at the beginning?
- Difficulty remembering certain events
- Short term memory impairment
- Hard time learning new information
- Irritability
What are characteristics/symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease in general?
- Language problems
- Disorientation (time, place, identity confusion)
- Irritability
- Depression
What are neuritic plaques (a brain change associated with Alzheimer’s disease)?
- Beta amyloid deposits
- Primarily found and most dense in frontal cortex