Articles: dementia.
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The objective of the study is to estimate the prevalence of dementia using the data of the Paquid cohort. A sample of 3,149 subjects aged 65 years and older living at home or in institution was randomly chosen in Gironde (France). A questionnaire and psychometric tests were used to evaluate cognitive functioning and the presence of dementia was assessed through DSM III Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of mental disorders (ed. ⋯ The prevalence increased with age with nearly a doubling every 5 years of age. In institution, dementia frequency remained stable. The relative risk of a demented subject to be institutionalized with regard to a non demented subject decreased with age.
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Early referral for specialist assessment is becoming more common with memory disorders and dementia: the mean Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) score of new patients at our clinic rose from 18.7 to 20.7 between 1986 and 1990. The clinical diagnosis of mild to moderate dementia has been recognized to be difficult, but several studies have reported cross-sectional diagnosis. We examined the number of visits required to establish a clinical diagnosis of dementia in the first 125 patients attending a Memory Disorders Clinic who had at least two visits (six months apart) and the stability of the diagnoses. ⋯ Sixteen per cent of patients interchanged between the categories of Alzheimer's, mixed and vascular dementias. Possible age-associated memory impairment progressed to dementia in six of eight cases, and depression to dementia in three cases. The diagnosis of mild to moderate dementia should not be restricted to a cross-sectional approach, but should involve serial clinical, psychological and affective assessments.
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In the absence of advanced directives, physicians treating demented patients rely on surrogates to help make medical care decisions. ⋯ In this study, surrogates of even the most demented nursing home patients prefer hospital level services including intensive care unit care for the treatment of acute illness. Efforts to control access to services on ethical or economic grounds may meet with resistance.