The planning of appropriate medical and social care in dementia
- DOI:
- 10.1093/med/9780198779803.003.0013
This chapter discusses how medical practices can plan appropriately for future management of Alzheimer’s disease. The complexity and heterogeneity of the clinical and social problems in dementia requires a multifaceted approach in clinical practice. With regard to the aetiology of dementia, we are currently moving from the classical hypothesis that dementia is caused by a few distinct and well-defined disease entities (such as Alzheimer’s disease, frontal lobe dementia, vascular dementia) to a pathogenetic hypothesis, in which each patient’s dementia is caused by a combination of slowly progressing, pathophysiologic processes such as Alzheimer-type pathology (i.e. neurofibrillary (β-amyloid) plaques and tangles), taupathies, synucleinopathies, and vascular lesions. The diagnostic process in dementia first consists of diagnosing which disease processes caused the cognitive decline and next what problems in care delivery are present and have to be solved.
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