Description of an Alzheimer’s Case
Today we bring you an Alzheimer’s case from a very real perspective, highlighting the importance of detecting the history, diagnosis, and treatment of this disease, which is unfortunately increasingly present in our societies.
Symptomatic History in Alzheimer’s
When her husband went to check, the cake was in the oven, but she had forgotten to turn it on. It wasn’t the first time something like this had happened. For about two years, her daughters began to observe changes in their mother’s behavior. What they initially described as minor oversights, soon became warning signs that something serious was happening to her. As they themselves recount, she always loved to cook and gathered the family at home with any excuse, leaving them impressed with her dishes. However, it became common for her to forget to add an important ingredient or even to season twice. Over the months, she started making shopping lists, which she hadn’t needed before, and got confused with payments and change. She asked repetitive questions about the same topic or told the same story multiple times to the same people. She didn’t remember her medical appointments, and although she had always been religious, she quickly lost interest in going to church. Within months, she erased from her mind her daughters’ birthdays, and it wasn’t uncommon for her to arrive home late, accompanied by a neighbor who found her disoriented, not recognizing the streets, even getting lost on one occasion.
Changes in personality
Her personality also changed, to the point that memory loss was not the most serious problem they had to face. She suffered from significant affective disorders. She had strong feelings of uselessness, became frustrated frequently, and sadness began to dominate her daily life. She exhibited impulsive behavior, becoming aggressive when contradicted. Her daily routine became erratic and chaotic, despite her family remembering her as an organized and methodical woman.
Over time, she began to neglect her personal appearance. She could wear the same clothes for a week and never found time to shower. She dressed untidily, and although she had always been a stylish woman, her new outfits lacked any aesthetic sense. She wore clothes unsuitable for the season and sometimes buttoned her shirts irregularly.
Extremely sociable and talkative, her communication skills gradually diminished. She had difficulty maintaining the thread of conversations and found it hard to find words, often using inappropriate ones for the situation and context. She struggled to name common objects, a fact she tried to compensate for by giving many descriptions of them.
The clinical profile and diagnosis of Alzheimer’s
This is the account of the background and personal history of a 64-year-old woman who attends a neuropsychology consultation accompanied by her family members. Upon her arrival at the center and after initial evaluation, a disoriented patient is observed in all three spheres (time, space, and person). She does not remember the day of the month or the week, showing failures in temporal orientation. Spatially, she is unable to describe or locate the center, even though she lives a few streets away. She presents language alterations, with marked difficulties in naming objects, as well as failures in understanding and executing simple commands. Slowness of thought, inability to recall words in the short term, and significant difficulties in simple mental calculation.
The patient presents with memory impairment of insidious onset and several years of evolution with a progressive course associated with different cognitive areas (language, constructive praxias, dressing, visual agnosia, calculation, associative thinking) that significantly interfere with her daily life, causing a significant functional impairment. With this clinical profile, and after undergoing neuroimaging tests and complementary laboratory examinations, she is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease according to DSM-IV criteria (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fourth edition) with a GDS 5 deterioration index according to the Reisberg Global Deterioration Scale.
Alzheimer’s: characteristics and treatment
Alzheimer’s disease is the most common primary dementia. It generally presents a progressive course, with memory failures being the most frequent initial symptom, subsequently causing affectation to various cognitive and behavioral functions. Classically, Alzheimer’s disease has been considered the prototype of cortical dementias, establishing a defining profile known as aphaso-apraxo-agnosic syndrome. It affects 5-15% of the population over 65 years of age, although it can also occur in younger patients. Alzheimer’s disease is attributed to more than 50% of all dementias. Risk factors for developing it, in addition to age, include a family history, vascular risk factors, and having suffered severe traumatic brain injury (TBI). Numerous studies suggest that having a good educational level allows the patient to have a cognitive reserve that helps delay the onset of the disease.
Non-pharmacological treatment of Alzheimer’s
As a non-pharmacological treatment, from the neuropsychology area, a cognitive stimulation program is designed, which the patient attends weekly with the aim of strengthening preserved areas, while also trying to maintain the person’s cognitive reserve for as long as possible. The activities developed within this program also allow her to compensate for some of the deficient aspects she presents through the use of alternative emotional and cognitive resources.
The study of dementias, key in treatments
This article describes an Alzheimer’s case. To promote proper detection and treatment of this disease and other dementias, ISEP offers the Master’s in Aging and Dementias.займы на электронные кошельки через интернет мгновенно