Dementia Quiz Flashcards
(58 cards)
Dementia diagnosis
- impaired short-term memory
- impaired long-term memory
- at least one of those: impaired abstract thinking, personality change, impaired judgement, impaired constructional abilities, impaired language, impaired praxis, or impaired visual recognition
Dementia substypes
- subcortical
- cortical
- mixed
- other
- pseudodementia
General symptoms of Dementia
- memory failure
- disorientation
- lapses in judgement
- difficulty performing activities of daily life
- difficulty performing mentally challenging tasks
- misplacing things
- apathy and loss of initiative
- changes in mood
Cortical dementia
- alzheimer’s
- Pick’s disease
- Primary progressive aphasia
Subcortical dementia
- parkinson’s
- huntington’s
- progressive supranuculear palsy
- HIV encephalopathy
mixed dementia
- vascular dementia
- lewy body dementia
other dementia
- normal pressure hydrocephalus
- Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease
Parkinson’s Disease
A degenerative disease affecting nuclei in the midbrain and brain stem.
Primary symptoms: disturbances of movement
Neuropathology: deterioration not dopaminergic neurons in the basal ganglia and brainstem (called substantial nigra)
PD symptoms
- resting tremor (“pill rolling” tremor of the hands often in the first sign of tremor to appear)
- muscle rigidity (the person may complain of unusual stiffness and difficulty moving)
- slowness of movement and difficulty initiating movement (bradykinesia)
- postural instability (impaired balance)
PD communication deficits - early
Weak voice, increased speech rate and imprecise articulation, stutter-like syllable repetitions; micrographia (small writing)
PD communication deficits - middle
Drooling and swallowing impairments
PD communication deficits - late
Comprehension and attention
Huntington’s Disease symptoms
- chorea (involuntary writhing movements)
- cognitive decline
- neurobehavioral symptoms (personality changes, depression, agitation, paranoia, delusions)
Huntington’s cognitive and communication deficits
Dysarthria due to chorea is the most common language symptom; cognitive impairments include sustained attention, memory, and judgement
Progressive supranuclear palsy - symptoms
- Similar to PD - rigidity and slowness of movement, but without tremors
- rigidity is primarily in neck and trunk, rather than in limbs
Progressive supranuclear palsy - cognitive and communication deficits
- dysarthria appears early and can be severe at that stage
- progressive dementia appears in mid to late stages
HIV - later symptoms
- later symptoms (impaired perception, memory, intellect and language) more cortical
HIV - early symptoms
- early symptoms (weakness, slowness, rigidity, dyskinesia) are characteristic of extrapyramidal pathology
HIV cognitive and communication deficits - early
Subtle word retrieval effects, speech & reading comprehension impairments
HIV cognitive and communication deficits - mid
Motor speech impairments, comprehension impairment worsen
HIV cognitive and communication deficits - late
Speech output and comprehension limited to highly familiar materials
AD symptoms
- progressive deterioration of intellect
- first disturbances are in memory, reasoning, judgement, orientation, mood; increasing agitation, wandering off, incontinence as disease progresses
- eventually, almost cognitive function is grossly impaired
- usually pass away within 5-10 years from diagnosis
AD communication symptoms - early
- sounds: used correctly
- words: may omit a meaningful word, usually a noun, when talking in sentences; may report trouble thinking of the right word; vocabulary is shrinking
- grammar: generally correct
- content: may drift from the topic; reduced ability to generate series of meaningful sentences; difficulty comprehending new information; vague
- use: knows when to talk, although may talk too long on a subject; may be apathetic, failing to initiate a conversation when it would be appropriate to do so; may have difficulty understanding humor, verbal analogies, sarcasm, and indirect and nonliteral statement
AD communication symptoms - middle
- sounds: used correctly
- words: difficulty thinking of words in a category; anomia in conversation; difficulty naming objects; reliance on automatisms; vocabulary noticeably diminished
- grammar: sentence fragments and deviations common; may have difficulty understanding grammatically complex sentences
- content: frequently repeats ideas, forgets topic, talks about events of past or trivia; fewer ideas
- use: knows when to talk; recognizes questions; may fail to greet; loss of sensitivity to conversational partners; rarely corrects mistakes