Table of Contents
- Overview
- Symptoms
- Treatment
- Prevention
- Images
As the AD becomes worse, symptoms are more obvious and interfere with your ability to take care of yourself. Symptoms can include:
- Forgetting details about current events
- Forgetting events in your own life history, losing awareness of who you are
- Change in sleep patterns, often waking up at night
- Difficulty reading or writing
- Poor judgment and loss of ability to recognize danger
- Using the wrong word, mispronouncing words, speaking in confusing sentences
- Withdrawing from social contact
- Having
hallucinations , arguments, striking out, and violent behavior - Having delusions, depression, agitation
- Difficulty doing basic tasks, such as preparing meals, choosing proper clothing, and driving
People with severe AD can no longer:
- Understand language
- Recognize family members
- Perform basic activities of daily living, such as eating, dressing, and bathing
Other symptoms that may occur with AD:
Incontinence - Swallowing problems
Signs and tests
AD can often be diagnosed through a history and physical exam by a skilled doctor or nurse. A health care provider will take a history, do a physical exam (including a neurological exam), and perform a mental status examination.
Tests may be ordered to help determine whether other medical problems could be causing dementia or making it worse. These conditions include:
Thyroid disease - Vitamin deficiency
Brain tumor Stroke - Intoxication from medication
- Chronic infection
Anemia - Severe depression
- In the early stages of dementia, brain image scans may be normal. In later stages, an MRI may show a decrease in the size of different areas of the brain.
- While the scans do not confirm the diagnosis of AD, they do exclude other causes of dementia (such as stroke and tumor).
Review Date: 10/04/2010
Reviewed By: Daniel Kantor, MD, Medical Director of Neurologique, Ponte Vedra,
FL and President of the Florida Society of Neurology (FSN). Review
provided by VeriMed Healthcare Network. Also reviewed by David
Zieve, MD, MHA, Medical Director, A.D.A.M., Inc.
A.D.A.M., Inc. is accredited by URAC, also known as the American Accreditation HealthCare Commission (www.urac.org)
