Dementia

Description:

Dementia represents the state acquired owing to organic lesion of a brain and is shown by disturbance of intelligence, thinking, memory, understanding, the speech and other cognitive functions. Most often the disease progressing is followed by a social dezadaptetion and can result in disability. Most dementia affects senior citizens.

Dementia symptoms:

Symptoms of dementias can be various, depending on a basic disease against the background of which it develops. As a rule, initial manifestations are characterized by decrease of the activity, interests, apathy, emergence of dependence on relatives. Against the background of gradual decrease in intelligence and interests untidiness, inability to look after itself increases. Forgetfulness amplifies up to that patients do not remember names of relatives, forget their outward, cannot tell whether they have breakfast, what day of the week today. Functions of the speech, the account and the letter can be broken. So, patients confuse words, in words syllables interchange the position, or are not capable to the involuntary speech but only they repeat the phrases told by others. Emotionality can also significantly change: patients are not capable of joy or grief, seem released from all surrounding, or their emotions can be excessively elaborate, inappropriate, improper to a case. Against the background of disorders of thinking and emotions emergence of nonsense and hallucinations is possible.

Dementia reasons:

There are several classifications of dementias. It should be noted that this morbid condition, inherently, is not an independent disease, and acts as a symptom of other diseases. So, it is accepted to allocate:

    * dementias connected with neurologic and vascular diseases (for example, at Alzheimer's disease or atherosclerosis of vessels of a brain)
    * dementias at diseases of internals (a chronic renal and liver failure)
    * dementias at intoxications (for example, alcoholic or dementias at chronic poisonings with arsenic, compounds of nitrogen on industrial productions).

It should be noted that as dementia reason at elderly often serves the chronic use of drugs. Usually it is observed at co-administration of several drugs in inadequately high doses. Such dementia is reversible at cancellation of drugs. Most often "responsible" for temporary easing of intelligence and memory are hypnotic drugs, antidepressants, hypotensive and antiarrhytmic drugs.

Treatment of Dementia:

Treatment of dementias has to be closely connected with exact diagnosis of their origin, and then - and treatment of a basic disease. It is necessary to remember that some disturbances of cognitive functions can be reversible at the correct correction of a diet and a way of life (for example, at atherosclerotic and alcoholic dementia, and also dementias at a number of hepatic diseases).