Doctors ‘too slow’ diagnosing dementia
Doctors in parts of the country are not diagnosing dementia early enough and must be better trained in order to improve treatment, the head of Britain’s largest biomedical research charity has said.
By Nick Collins, Science Correspondent
7:09AM BST 02 Apr 2012
Sir Mark Walport said the “unacceptable” variation in diagnosis rates in different regions was one of the first problems that the government must tackle in its new drive to improve dementia care.
Doctors’ effectiveness at spotting dementia varies dramatically across the country, with just 37 per cent of sufferers in the south west receiving a diagnosis compared with 46 per cent in the north east and almost 70 per cent in parts of Northern Ireland, according to Alzheimer’s Society figures based on NHS data.
Alzheimer’s sufferers told David Cameron at a conference last week that they and their families had in some cases noticed the condition developing before doctors made the link between their symptoms and the disease.
Speaking after the event at which the Prime Minister announced new measures to tackle Britain’s growing dementia crisis Sir Mark, one of the figureheads appointed to oversee the project, said better diagnosis could potentially be one of its “early wins”.
Spotting the problem early is crucial because it gives doctors the chance to intervene before the disease becomes too severe.
Sir Mark told the Daily Telegraph: “There needs to be a much greater consistency in terms of diagnosis, I think there is a lack of uniformity. In different parts you will find different diagnosis rates, so there is an information and education element in this.
“I think some general practitioners will be more effective at diagnosing Alzheimer’s earlier than others, and one needs to be sure that there is a consistency of approach there.
“If people recognise that it is actually important to diagnose clinical Alzheimer’s at a point at which it can be diagnosed without doing special tests, then it is unacceptable that there are differences in the effectiveness of diagnosis.”
Dementia is thought to affect 670,000 people in Britain but due to the ageing population this is forecast to rise to one million over the next 10 years, placing a huge burden on the health and social care services.
Mr Cameron announced last week he would more than double funding for dementia research from £26.6m in 2010 to £66m in 2015.
Sir Mark said it was crucial to invest the money in social care research which could help people live independently at home for longer, as well as longer and more expensive studies aimed at finding new drugs or therapies to treat the disease.
Developing drugs for Alzheimer’s is harder than for most cancers and a universal cure may never exist, but large-scale studies of NHS patient data could help identify ways of enabling patients to “live longer and better”, he added.
He said: “I don’t know when the breakthrough will be, if ever, that we will suddenly say, ‘this is the magic bullet’.
“In terms of what is going to make the most difference, I think in the short to medium term it is the social care that is most important. In the long term obviously one hopes it will be possible to develop some kind of intervention that will slow or prevent the progress of the disease.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9179893/Doctors-too-slow-diagnosing-dementia.html
