dementia
Sign in to saveDementia is a syndrome, often associated with neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's, and characterized by a general decline in cognitive abilities that affects a person's ability to perform everyday activities. This typically involves problems with memory, thinking, behavior, and motor control. Aside from memory impairment and a disruption in thought patterns, the most common symptoms of dementia include emotional problems, difficulties with language, and decreased motivation. The symptoms may be described as occurring in a continuum over several stages. Dementia is an incurable, prog
AI overview
Dementia is a condition involving a general decline in cognitive abilities—including memory, thinking, behavior, and motor control—that makes it harder for people to perform everyday activities. It matters because it's an incurable, progressive condition that can cause emotional problems, language difficulties, and decreased motivation, typically developing across several stages.
AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.
Key facts
- Medical condition.risks
- Several across the life course (e.g. less education, hearing loss, vision loss, physical inactivity, obesity, high cholesterol, hypertension, diabetes, smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, social isolation, air pollution, traumatic brain injury, depression)
- Medical condition.diagnosis
- Clinical assessment, cognitive testing (mini–mental state examination), and imaging
- Medical condition.differential
- Delirium, depression, hypothyroidism
- Medical condition.prevention
- Addressing risk factors throughout the life course, e.g. preventing, reducing or treating hearing and vision loss, depression, head injury and vascular risk factors (e.g. cholesterol, diabetes), decreasing smoking, and maintaining physical activity and cognitive stimulation
- Medical condition.treatment
- Varies but supportive care is given
- Medical condition.medication
- Varies depending on the type and stage, most medications have a small benefit
- Medical condition.prognosis
- Varies, dementia is a life limiting condition and life expectancy is usually shortened
- Medical condition.frequency
- 57 million (2021)
- Medical condition.deaths
- 1.62 million dementia-related deaths (2019) estimated to increase to 4.91 million by 2050
Article
56 sectionsContents
- Signs and symptoms
- Stages
- Prodromal
- Early
- Middle
- Late
- Types
- Alzheimer's disease
- Vascular dementia
- Lewy body dementias
- Frontotemporal dementias
- Mixed dementia
- Autoimmune dementia
- Childhood dementias
- Early onset dementia
- Later onset dementia
- Secondary dementias
- Huntington's disease
- HIV
- Prion diseases
- Alcohol-related dementia
- Conditions with dementia-like symptoms
- Diagnosis
- Imaging
- Prevention
- Risk factors{{anchor|Causes}}
- Diet
- Dental health
- Management
- Psychological and psychosocial therapies
- Cognitive training and rehabilitation
- Medications
- Palliative care
- Person-centered care
- Sleep disturbances
- Pain
- Eating difficulties
- Exercise
- Assistive technology and digital health
- Suicide risk following diagnosis
- Epidemiology
- Inequities and inequalities
- Socioeconomic status and deprivation
- Race and ethnicity
- Gender
- History
- Terminology
- Society and culture
- National policies on dementia
- Financial costs
- Awareness
- Philanthropy
- Research directions
- References
- Further reading
- External links
Dementia is a syndrome, often associated with neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's, and characterized by a general decline in cognitive abilities that affects a person's ability to perform everyday activities. This typically involves problems with memory, thinking, behavior, and motor control. Aside from memory impairment and a disruption in thought patterns, the most common symptoms of dementia include emotional problems, difficulties with language, and decreased motivation. The symptoms may be described as occurring in a continuum over several stages. Dementia is an incurable, progressive neurocognitive disorder, with varying degrees of severity (mild to major) and many forms or subtypes. The condition has a significant effect on the individual, their caregivers, and their social relationships in general. Dementia is not the same as age-related decline in cognition and memory, with no change in intelligence.
The most common form of dementia is Alzheimer's. Dementia can be caused by brain injuries and stroke. It has also been described as a spectrum of disorders with subtypes of dementia based on which known disorder caused its development, such as Parkinson's disease for Parkinson's disease dementia, Huntington's disease for Huntington's disease dementia, vascular disease for vascular dementia, HIV infection causing HIV dementia, frontotemporal lobar degeneration for frontotemporal dementia, Lewy body disease for dementia with Lewy bodies, and prion diseases. Subtypes of neurodegenerative dementias may also be based on the underlying pathology of misfolded proteins, such as synucleinopathies and tauopathies. The coexistence of more than one type of dementia is known as mixed dementia.