There is no absolute easiest way to determine dementia. Dementia is a severe cognitive dysfunction. To determine whether you are suffering from dementia, you have to make a comprehensive judgment from several aspects.
1. Etiology: mostly caused by primary diseases, including central nervous system lesions, cerebrovascular lesions, craniocerebral trauma, intracranial infections, metabolic diseases, hereditary diseases and so on. For example, Alzheimer’s disease is the most common type of severe neurocognitive disorder (dementia) in old age, accounting for more than 50% of the total number of dementia patients.
2. Clinical manifestations: The earliest symptom is forgetting recent events, which is also one of the core clinical manifestations. In addition, there is also a decline in understanding and judgment of things, a decline in learning and working ability, large mood swings, and impaired or even loss of self-care ability.
3. Diagnosis and treatment: A thorough understanding of the medical history, family history, and quantitative assessment using the Cognitive Assessment Scale (CAS). It also needs to be differentiated from other symptoms (e.g. delirium). The principle of treatment is to improve the patient’s quality of life. Since there are no specific drugs for dementia, symptomatic treatment is needed.
Determination of dementia requires a wealth of knowledge and clinical experience of medical practitioners to make a judgment based on the patient’s comprehensive situation, otherwise it is easy to be confused with other diseases.
It is recommended to go to neurology or psychiatry department for professional treatment as soon as possible when patients are found to have some suspicious clinical manifestations, so as to avoid delaying the condition and leading to adverse results.