Screen when, where, how, why? The questions are clear. The answers a little less … Which justifies the fears of hundreds of thousands of potential patients.
Is there an interest in screening early?
Screening early for treatment is not yet completely certain for doctors. There are drugs that were supposed to delay the onset of the disease; How long it is not clear, but it is true that, eye to eye, when you ask the fiercest critics among doctors, if they would take these therapies for their own use, they all answer yes , because there is no other treatment … Yet since June, the Minister of Health has decided to no longer reimburse these drugs. On the advice of HAS experts. In fact, it seems that this expertise is violently questioned by undoubtedly recognized experts in the disease. They demand the abolition of this measure which gives rise to a two-tier medicine: these drugs are not prohibited; just delisted. This means that doctors can continue to prescribe them… and patients can pay for them!
In fact, this early detection is not only a question of treatment but rather, quite simply, a right … Right to know, right not to waste time to realize one last dream, to have one last substantive conversation, right to transmit.
A few months gained at this period of life is eternity. And then there are the diagnostic errors!
Finally, research needs patients at an early stage to test new drugs which we are promised will arrive in the next 4 years.
Can we be wrong about the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease?
A very serious and badly treated nervous breakdown can lead to a degradation of consciousness which looks a lot like it… And there we have a very effective treatment.
The slow descent of alcoholism also gives similar symptoms.
There is also what is called vascular dementias. The result is somewhat the same, but the cause is different. In Alzheimer’s disease, there are changes in the brain that appear to be stuck in a kind of glue that we will be able to get rid of one day. For all that is vascular, it is the blood circulation which does not completely do its job and it does not evolve in the same way.
So, screen for Alzheimer’s as early as possible to try to make this descent into oblivion as worthy as possible. However, there is no blood test to confirm this terrible diagnosis?
There is currently no single blood test that can determine whether a person has Alzheimer’s disease. This is also the reason why doctors, even when they are almost certain of the diagnosis, speak of “probable Alzheimer’s disease”. But in fact when we take again thousands of cases we realize that this diagnosis was exact, according to the studies, in 80 to 90% of the identified cases.
These modifications of some details of daily life that will alert those around you, what should we think of them?
That the family doctor who will then be able to help himself with a consultation in a center specializing in memory, is able to reassure all those who – poorly informed – are worried, in their fifties, in front of the loss of a bunch of keys or forgetting an appointment. There are two very distinct reasons for these unintentional acts. The most logical is, undoubtedly, the lack of attention which therefore does not allow us to remember. A little effort of concentration makes it easy to piece together the story. In Alzheimer’s disease, on the other hand, there is a mechanism, which is unknown today, which prevents memory from being imprinted on our hard disk, which nevertheless works very well.
What are the symptoms to look for if those around you are in doubt?
Medicine, if it is unable to quantify the disease, has established, by following 4000 people over the age of 65 in Gironde for twelve years, four major symptoms which should not be considered trivial and which are found in the first months. of disease.
First, phone use. Patients no longer use it on their own initiative, and experience problems finding and dialing unknown numbers.
Secondly, the use of means of transport. At the onset of the disease, there may be difficulty in traveling alone and independently by public transport or with one’s own car, to go to unfamiliar places.
Third motive of concern, is the inability to take care of the taking of drugs, their dosage and especially schedules.
Finally, 4th category signs, problems managing the family budget to write checks, pay bills, plan expenses are the fourth cause of alarm.
If there is a disturbance in one of these four activities of daily living, is there a suspicion of Alzheimer’s disease?
Yes and we must consult quickly.
It is not a very complicated diagnosis to hear the simplicity of these questions …
Think again ! It can take a long time to make a diagnosis. Even if it is not always easy to get an appointment in a good memory consultation!
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