Dementia

Please note: Wikipedia does not give medical advice.

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Dementia (from L. demens) is progressive decline in cognitive function due to damage or disease in the brain beyond what might be expected from normal ageing. Particulary affected areas may be memory, attention, language and problem solving, although particularly in the later stages of the condition, affected persons may be disoriented in time (not knowing what day, week, month or year it is), place (not knowing where they are) and person (not knowing who they are).

Affected persons may also show signs of psychosis and delirium.

Types

The most common types of dementia are as follows and vary according to the history and the presentation of the disease:

• Alzheimer's disease
• multi-infarct dementia (also known as vascular dementia), including Binswanger's disease
• Frontotemporal dementia
  • dementia with Lewy bodies
  • Pick's disease
  • Corticobasal degeneration
  • Semantic dementia

Approximately 10% of a sample of suspected dementia cases, will have a potentially treatable cause. These include:

• Depressive pseudodementia
• Acute confusional state
• Hypothyroidism
• Normal pressure hydrocephalus
• Vitamin B12 deficiency
• Vitamin B6 (thiamine) deficiency
• Tumour

or in very rare cases

• Frontal lobe type
• Down's syndrome
• Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease
• AIDS

External links

• Dementia tutorial for U.K. practitioners by the Alzheimer's Society