Dementia

Introduction Dementia refers to the declining occupational and social activity skills and obstacles that appear in the state of consciousness, cognitive function decline, memory loss and loss, visual space damage, orientation, computing power, judgment, etc. Loss, and successive obstacles such as personality, emotion and behavior change, and a progressive process of aggravation. The disease begins in middle-aged progressive dementia, which is a slow personality change and social decline in the early stage, leading to the decline of intelligence, memory and language function. In the late stage, it can be expressed as apathy, euphoria, and occasional extrapyramidal symptoms.

Cause

1. Brain degenerative diseases: Some cortical and subcortical diseases can cause dementia. Common causes are Alzheimer's disease, Pick's disease, Huntington's disease, Parkinson's disease, Wilson's disease, cortical-striatum- spinal joint. Denaturation and so on.

2. Cerebrovascular disease: cerebrovascular diseases in different parts can cause dementia, such as multiple infarct dementia, carotid occlusion, subcortical arteriosclerotic encephalopathy, thrombotic vasculitis.

3. Metabolic diseases: Some metabolic diseases affect the function of the brain, causing dementia, such as mucous edema, hyperparathyroidism or hypothyroidism, adrenal hyperfunction, hepatolenticular degeneration, uremia, chronic liver dysfunction.

4. Intracranial infection: intracranial infection leads to changes in brain parenchyma and brain function, leading to dementia, such as various encephalitis, neurosyphilis, various meningitis, Kuru disease.

an examination

First determine if you are demented and then determine the cause of dementia.

1. Physical examination: Dementia itself has no fixed signs, but the primary disease can often have certain signs. Patients with paralytic dementia may have irregular pupils and two different sizes. Elderly patients with psychiatric diseases often have corneal ring, white hair and skin wrinkles. Lead poisoning can be seen in patients with lead poisoning. Some primary diseases are often accompanied by certain signs of the nervous system.

2. Laboratory examination: patients with suspected organic dementia should be selected for lumbar puncture, blood biochemical test, EEG, brain ultrasound, isotope brain scan, skull X-ray film, gas cerebral angiography, cerebral angiography Or CT and other inspections.

Differential diagnosis

(a) Alzheimer's disease early manifested as memory impairment and is increasing. At the beginning, there were only near memory impairments, poor orientation, reduced work efficiency, misconstruction or fiction. On this basis, dementia is getting worse, the calculation power is weak, the judgment is low, the response is slow, the understanding is difficult, and the speech disorder and Aphasia, misuse, loss of recognition, etc. Behavior disorder, stereotyped animals, occasional illusions and delusions, the age of onset is 40 to 60 years old.

(2) The age of onset of Pick's disease is between 40 and 60 years old. Women are more than men. The initial prominent symptoms are behavioral disorders. Patients are less lazy and do not care about other people's daily lives such as diet, sleep, and clothing. Keep an eye out for personality changes or memory impairments in the early stages. The patient loses his wit and works carelessly. In the early stage, there are focal symptoms such as misuse, loss of reading, loss of writing or misrecognition.

The material in this site is intended to be of general informational use and is not intended to constitute medical advice, probable diagnosis, or recommended treatments.