W13 - Dementia Flashcards
What is dementia?
“A clinical syndrome caused by a wide range of diseases that affect the brain”
“Impairment of memory, thinking, orientation, comprehension, calculation, learning capacity, language and judgement”
What are the 5 areas impairment can occur in dementia?
- Language
- Memory
- Visuospatial Skills
- Emotion or Personality
- Cognition (thought processes, agonosia, impaired orientation or executive functioning)
How do we classify dementia?
(3 areas)
- Cortical v sub-cortical
- Remediable v Irreversible
- Early v Late onset
What are the stages of onset in dementia?
- Early stage
- Middle stage
- Late stage
- Terminal stage
What are the cortical causes of dementia?
- Alzheimer’s Disease
- Dementia with Lewy bodies
- Pick’s disease/Frontotemporal Dementia
What are the sub-cortical causes of dementia?
- Parkinson’s disease
- Wilson’s disease
- Huntington’s disease
- Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP)
What are the other causes of dementia?
- Intra-cranial conditions (tumours, hydrocephalus)
- Head injury
- Korsakoff’s/Wernicke’s Syndrome
- Alcohol-induced dementia
- Chronic drug use
- Boxer’s syndrome
What infections/diseases can cause dementia?
- Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease
- Neurosyphillis
- AIDS dementia complex
What are the symptoms of Alzheimer’s Disease?
- Struggle to remember what they’ve done or said
- May repeat themselves in conversation
- More recent memories are typically lost first
- Older memories can remain for longer (remember childhood better)
- Brain has reduced neurotransmitter which means cells communicate with one another less effectively
- Reduced emotional control
What are the symptoms of Dementia with Lewy bodies?
Difficulties with:
- Movement
- Concentraion
- Alertness
- Hallucinations
- Problems with sleep - disrupted sleep and vivid dreams
What are the symptoms of Pick’s Disease?
Behaviour:
- Loss of inhibitions
- Loss of interest and motivation
- Loss of sympathy and empathy
Language:
- Slow, hesitant speech
- Impaired understanding of complex sentences
- Circumlocution/WFD
What are the symptoms of multi-infarct dementia/vascular dementia?
- Slowed thinking
- Slowed problem solving
- WFD
- Planning/organisation
- Concentration
What causes Alzheimer’s disease?
- Thought to be caused by the formation of deposits of protein in the brain called plaques and tangles that function abnormally in brains with Alzheimer’s
What causes dementia with Lewy bodies?
- Lewy bodies are tiny clumps of proteins in nerve cells that prevent nerves communicating, leading to cell death
- Symptoms worsen as more nerve cells are damaged
What causes Pick’s Disease/Frontotemporal Dementia?
- A range of conditions that damage the cells in the frontal and temporal lobes
- Frontal lobe damage causes changes in personality and behaviour
- Temporal lobe damage can cause problems with language
