Premium
O3‐07–07: An in‐home geriatric program for vulnerable community‐dwelling older people improves the detection of dementia in primary care
Author(s) -
Perry Marieke,
Melis René,
Teerenstra Steven,
Drašković Irena,
Achterberg Theo,
Eijken Monique,
Lucassen Peter,
OldeRikkert Marcel
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
alzheimer's and dementia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 6.713
H-Index - 118
eISSN - 1552-5279
pISSN - 1552-5260
DOI - 10.1016/j.jalz.2008.05.465
Subject(s) - dementia , medicine , medical diagnosis , delirium , intervention (counseling) , gerontology , physical therapy , psychiatry , disease , pathology
Background: Recent studies have provided increasing evidence for the existence of neuropsychiatric sub-syndromes in dementia. However, these previous studies have failed to determine the consistence of neuropsychiatric sub-syndromes across several subgroups, like dementia etiology, dementia severity, use of medication, age and gender. In this respect, the initiative was taken to evaluate the consistency of neuropsychiatric syndromes in a relatively large sample of patients with dementia from several centres from the European Alzheimer’s Disease Consortium (EADC). The aim of this study was to determine the consistency of neuropsychiatric subsyndromes of the Neuropsychiatric Inventory (NPI) across several clinical and demographic subgroups in a large sample of outpatients with dementia. Methods: Cross-sectional data of 2,808 patients with dementia from 12 centres from the EADC were collected. Principal component analysis was used for factor analysis. Subanalyses were performed for dementia subtypes, dementia severity, medication use, age and gender. In addition, clusteranalyses of the NPI are in progress to come to conclusions about relevance of the neuropsychiatric syndromes at patient level. Results: The results showed the relatively consistent presence of the 4 neuropsychiatric subsyndromes ‘hyperactivity’, ‘psychosis’, ‘affective symptoms’ and ‘apathy’ across the subanalyses. The factor structure was not dependent on dementia subtypes, age and gender but was dependent on dementia severity and cholinesterase use. The factors hyperactivity and affective symptoms were present in all subanalyses, but the presence of the factors apathy and psychosis was dependent on use of cholinesterase inhibitors and dementia severity, respectively. The data analyses of the clusteranalyses are going on, but will be presented at the congress. Conclusions: The present study provided evidence for the relative consistency of neuropsychiatric subsyndromes across dementia subtypes, age and gender, thereby stressing the importance of thinking about neuropsychiatric subsyndromes instead of separate symptoms. However, the subsyndromes apathy and psychosis were dependent on use of cholinesterase inhibitors and dementia severity.