Many Americans With Dementia Don’t Even Know That They Have It, As They Haven’t Been Officially Diagnosed
In the United States, most people with dementia don’t know they have it. A new study has found that four out of five people in Texas with probable dementia have not received an official diagnosis and are not being treated for cognitive decline.
A lack of healthcare isn’t the problem, either. Less than seven percent of participants with probable dementia did not have a primary care provider.
That means most people over the age of 65 with cognitive decline were seeing their doctor regularly but were not receiving a diagnosis.
“The physician may not be diagnosing the patient or may be withholding the diagnosis of dementia,” said Josh Martins-Caulfield, a public health scientist from the University of Michigan.
“In practice, physicians often hesitate to diagnose dementia, citing reasons such as insufficient time with individual patients to conduct the screening process or not having dementia-specific training. The discomfort of providing the diagnosis may also lead to them to wait for patients or family members to raise concerns about memory issues rather than initiating discussions proactively.”
The study involved 652 older adults in Nueces County who were under the close care of a child or spouse. A total of 322 people from this group, with an average age of 76, were considered to have “probable dementia.”
Up to 84 percent of the 322 patients and their caregivers said they had not received an official diagnosis of dementia from their doctor.
There were also notable differences in diagnosis between ethnic groups. For instance, almost 85 percent of Mexican American participants with probable dementia had not been told by a doctor that they had dementia.
Meanwhile, 65 percent of non-Hispanic White participants with probable dementia had received a diagnosis. The large ethnic disparity cannot be explained by a lack of routine access to healthcare.
Sign up for Chip Chick’s newsletter and get stories like this delivered to your inbox.
However, the Alzheimer’s Association has found in the past that a third of Hispanic and Latino Americans experience discrimination when seeking healthcare, compared to just nine percent of non-Hispanic White Americans.
The recent data came from one county in Texas, so it does not necessarily represent the entire nation. Most medications for Alzheimer’s patients that are available today can only help with managing symptoms. Very few have any impact on disease progression.
Last year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a drug designed to treat the early symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease.
The medication showed encouraging results during the trials. Administering these kinds of drugs during the early stages of the disease results in the best outcomes.
The researchers pointed out that a blood test to help diagnose cognitive impairment would be helpful for healthcare providers.
The details of the full study were published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.
More About:News