What Is Dementia?

Dementia is a broad term utilised to explain decreased mental function that means enough to affect one’s ability to perform day to day activities. It refers to a category of diseases that causes a decline in brain ability or thinking skills, poor memory, confusion and poor problem solving. The term does not mention the reason, but it points to a vast range of signs that occur with brain degeneration.

Dementia is not a disease but a group of symptoms caused by different diseases of the brain. Vascular diseases or pathology or traumatic brain injury or infection may precipitate it. The most frequent type of dementia though is Alzheimer’s disease which ranges between 60-80% of elders suffering from it.

Alzheimer’s Disease: A Specific Condition

The best known is Alzheimer’s disease characterized by a slow steady decline of the neurons in the brain that results in the loss of memory, decline of the ability to reason, think and do even simple things. These two pathologic hallmarks are neurofibrillary tangle and amyloid plaque in this neurodegenerative disease, which interfere intercellular signal transmission and eventually results in cell death.

What is peculiar to Alzheimer is the fact that there is specific type of illness. Unlike other forms of dementia that can be attributed to certain causes, Alzheimer’s disease is in fact mainly a neurodegenerative disease. At first it is a minor dementia that in the final stages their memory has major problems, couldn’t recognize the family, forget simple things done daily, not know time and space.

Alzheimer’s Disease vs. Dementia

1. Definition and scope: Dementia itself is in fact very general term, meaning and representing a number of types of cognitive disorders, but Alzheimer is a name of a disease leading to a certain sort of dementia. Although all patients with Alzheimer’s also have dementia, not all patients with this dementia have Alzheimer’s.

2. Etiology and Pathology: There are several types of dementia, including infective dementia, traumatic dementia, stroke induced dementia. In Alzheimer’s, the causes are due to build-up of proteins in the brains, particularly amyloid plaques and tau tangles that harm and kill brain cells.

3. Progression of Symptoms: Even though memory loss is shared by both conditions, Alzheimer’s involves slow damage in mental ability, usually started by short-term amnesia, whereas others are not entirely identified, their beginnings can also be acute. Dementia caused due to other origins would include sudden developments, or those having mood swings with swings in behavior as its symptoms are unrelated to memorabilia.

4. Treatment and Management: Treatment of dementia is highly dependent on the root cause. Treatment of hypertension or cholesterol, for example, can improve vascular dementia as soon as it is provided. This disease has no cure and treatments are symptomatic to help slow its course or to treat specific cognitive features. In Alzheimer’s dementia, the current standard of care includes medication that often involves cholinesterase inhibitors and or NMDA antagonist; however, the medications may be very different for other types of dementia.

5. Diagnosis: Medical history, neurological examination and brain imaging to show amyloid plaques and tau tangles are usually used in the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s. Other types of dementia will have other types of diagnostics for vascular dementia, vascular health assessment and genetic testing is needed in diseases like frontotemporal dementia.

Why We Care About Discovered Differences

This becomes important to families and caregivers, in differentiating Alzheimer’s from general dementia. In the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease, management strategies of the disease progression and maintaining a good quality of life are generally pharmacological and cognitive therapy. However, other forms of dementia may well respond more efficaciously to interventions aimed at the specific cause, such as vascular health improvement or medical conditions.