Chapter 2
Spotting the Symptoms
In This Chapter
Spotting the early warning signs of dementia
Identifying cognitive problems
Understanding changes in emotional behaviour
Looking at functional problems
As doctors, we love to be able to categorise diseases and our ability to do our jobs properly depends on it. It’s important to know that set of symptoms A means a patient simply has a nasty dose of the common cold, while set of symptoms B means she’s more seriously ill with influenza. Without knowing what someone is up against, we can’t advise on treatments or tell her the likely outcome of what she’s going through.
In this chapter I look in some detail at the symptoms that show that someone has dementia. And I describe the particular features that allow clinicians to tell people which type of dementia they are suffering from.
Identifying the Early Warning Signs
While dementia affects everyone slightly differently, a few common symptoms can alert you to the fact that it may well be on its way. In the early stages, though, it’s important not to panic and see dementia lurking behind every ...
Get Dementia For Dummies - UK now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
