Category Archives: dementia

Trial could cut agonising wait for dementia diagnosis

November 16, 2012   Alzheimer’s, Carers, dementia

Government-backed assessment service trial will see Cambridge Cognition’s state-of-the-art diagnostic technologies placed in the community 

Following a 10-minute CANTABmobile test, patients who need further investigation will have an MRI scan to look at changes in their brain.

The traditional path to diagnosing dementia is long and slow, often taking 18 months of agonised waiting.

Now this could be set to change with a government-backed trial of a dementia assessment service that aims to cut this to just three months.

It is being called a “paradigm shift” as it depends on placing state-of-the-art diagnostic technologies in the community where people can access them quickly and easily.

According to senior lecturer and honorary consultant neurologist Dr Dennis Chan, this trial – dubbed the Brain Health Centre initiative – will accelerate access to the kind of evaluation currently available in only regional centres of excellence in hospital clinics.

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”I have dementia, but I still have a life to live”

November 15, 2012   Carers, dementia

”I have dementia, but I still have a life to live”

15 November 2012

How to respond to the growing challenge of dementia with patchy levels of diagnosis, care and support were among the issues discussed at Public Service Events’ Dementia, a National Crisis conference in Manchester. Caroline Pennington reports

October saw the new Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, promise that NHS dementia care in England would be the best in the world by 2015. A week prior to this bold affirmation the mood on the challenge of dementia at the Manchester conference centre was one of hesitant optimism gritted with realism.

Andrew Chidgey, director of external affairs at the Alzheimer’s Society, reminded delegates of the pervasive nature of the illness. “It is the personal experience of people living with dementia, their carers and families, which people are finding very difficult,” he said. “People are being diagnosed late, or not at all. People often are not getting the care and support – at the right time – that they need.”

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Cameron's dementia campaign will be a missed opportunity

November 9, 2012   Alzheimer’s, Carers, dementia

Unless the Dementia Friends initiative incorporates the Special method, a lot of money and good intentions will go to waste

 

Elderly Germans who have Alzheimer’s disease dance at a community centre in Berlin.

Yesterday’s announcement of a national campaign to increase understanding and awareness of Alzheimer’s could have been very good news. There will be £2.4m of government money given to the Alzheimer’s Society (AS), initially to train 6,000 Dementia Friend volunteers. It is hoped that they, in turn, will go back to their communities and create 1 million people in the population with greater awareness – “dementia friends”.

Alas, this is going to be a case of a wonderful opportunity missed. The core problem with Alzheimer’s and most dementia cases is that the person is no longer storing short-term memories. By the time they receive medical care, the vast majority are already in the mid or even late stage of the illness. Frequently they cannot recall what happened from more than 30 seconds ago. However, there is very solid evidence from brain imaging studies that their long-term memory is nearly always fully, or largely, intact.

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