Category: Vascular Dementia

When to Seek a Nursing Home

When is it the correct time to seek the assistance of a nursing home?  This is a monumental decision.   An initial hurdle is the public perception of nursing homes.  It is the place to go when one is ready to die.  This remains true for some, but much less than even twenty years ago.  Over half the patients admitted to Florida nursing homes leave in a better condition than when they were admitted.  Increasingly, nursing homes are fulfilling the duties of hospitals.  Most rehabilitation is now conducted in nursing homes, rather than hospitals and free standing rehab centers.  Rehabilitation is a general term for physical, occupational and speech therapy services.  In the state of Florida it would be fair to say that emergencies are evaluated at the hospital, but most of the long-term treatment occurs in the nursing home.

In the most general terms, seek nursing home treatment for a loved one when you are no longer able to care for them at home.  This statement sounds a bit obvious, but it is not obvious in practice.  Most people in the United States wait too long before seeking treatment for a loved one with Alzheimer’s Disease.  I will repeat that statement.  Most people wait too long for nursing home treatment.  This fly’s in the face of world opinion that American’s are quick to institutionalize the elderly.  Over the last twenty years, I have treated hundreds of patients whose only crime was to care for a demented loved one until they were physically and emotionally exhausted.  I have witnessed dozens of families form three shifts to care for an elderly parent twenty four hours a day, seven days a week.

An especially poignant example is a family aftercare group.  A woman tearfully described the guilt she experienced placing her mother in the nursing home.  She had cared for her severely demented mother for nearly twenty years; seriously impacting her marriage and career.  Like so many, she found herself in the unpleasant and awkward position of changing her mother’s dirty diapers.  At the time of her mother’s admission, she was over one hundred years old, and required total care for bathing, dressing and toileting.  Her tears became torrential when others in the group reflected the depth of her devotion and sacrifice.  The situation was not unusual, it was the support she received from peers of her own age that etched the story into memory.
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Another misconception is that demented elderly patients will decline rapidly in the nursing home.  It is may be awkward for family members to admit their loved one has mentally and physically improved in the nursing home.  It is easier to coordinate physician care in the nursing home.  On an outpatient basis, physicians rarely have a coordinated picture of the total clinical situation.  Said another way, Dr. A may unfortunately not be aware of what Dr. B has prescribed.  Dr. B may not be aware there is a Dr. A. .  In the nursing home, there is a master medication record, and this record is often reviewed by pharmacists to catch possible drug interactions-or just plain errors.  The nearly universal lack of coordinated outpatient care leads to many preventable iatrogenic hospital and nursing home admissions.  A potentially positive aspect of nursing home care is the increased socialization.  So many widowed and single elderly become extremely isolated, and this lack of socialization may be destructive to their mental and emotional functioning.  Family members are often surprised to the degree their loved one’s spirits have brightened in the nursing home.

A general rule of caring for a loved one is to not exhaust yourself in the process.  Once exhausted, a caretaker is largely worthless to the patient and themselves.  You will not be doing anyone a favor by working yourself to death.  Do not be deceived that nursing home placement is a sign of personal failure, or that keeping a loved one in their home will slow the disease.  Consider adult day care if you are becoming exhausted caring for a person with a progressive dementia.  Once the loved one experiences falls, becomes aggressive or escapes from the home, have them evaluated as soon as possible.  Please visit local nursing homes and develop a relationship with the ones that appear most promising.  Do not wait to evaluate institutions until the patient has an emergency-typically a fall.  Please listen to close others who tell you to lighten the workload.  We only know ourselves through the eyes of others.  A happy nursing home visitor will likely do more for the patient’s spirits than a depleted caretaker cleaning another diaper.

Vascular Dementia

Vascular dementia is a progressive loss of cognitive skills over time, secondary to a blockage or rupture of a blood vessel in the brain.  This term used to be called “multi-infarct dementia”, and other classification systems refer to it as an “arteriosclerotic dementia.”  The primary form is atherosclerosis, in which the plaques of fatty deposits form in the innermost layer of the cerebral artery.  It is almost exclusively a problem of the older adult.  Very young children are prone to arteriovenous malformations, which are congenital defects of the cerebral vascular system.  Most of these AVM’s are located in the brain stem, and do not result in the sort of symptoms observed in the older adult.

The primary deficit of multiple strokes is an impairment of memory.  The impairment may be the ability to recall old information or learn new information.  It is rare that someone forgets old information, yet learns new information at an average level.  The most common scenario is a decreased ability to retain new information, with increasing impairment of long-term personal information that declines with every subsequent stroke.  The specific deficit regarding loss of old personal information is called “episodic memory”, and it may be affected in isolation of other memory impairments.  A specific deficit of this type of memory is exceedingly rare, such that an impairment of new learning is much more common.

Vascular dementia is not limited to memory impairment alone.  The diagnostic criteria stipulates that a patient must have a memory impairment, as well as one other cognitive deficit, in order to be appropriately diagnosed with “Vascular Dementia”.  The most common cognitive impairment from stroke is difficulty with motor control; not just unilateral paralysis, but an impaired ability to carry out motor routines, despite a functional motor system.  Many stroke victims have difficultly recognizing and utilizing objects, despite having an intact sensory system.  Lastly, many stroke suffers have difficulty switching between mental tasks, making plans, and organizing the steps necessary to accomplish a plan.

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Psychological problems are common after suffering one or more strokes.  It is not common to have delusions of persecution or grandiosity after a stroke.  Some forms of progressive dementia affecting the right prefrontal-temporal area exhibit delusions as an early symptom of the disease.  Neglect of the right or left visual space should not be mistaken for a delusion.  It is frequently the case that the patient suffered with a Delusional Disorder prior to the onset of the stroke.  The most common psychological symptom of “Vascular Dementia” is depression.  The depression may arise from difficulty with psychological adjustment to their declined condition, or a general psychomotor retardation without any awareness as to their own psychological condition.  This takes the form of a significantly reduced reaction time, both simple and complex.  The person appears chronically fatigued, laconic, and wanting to be left alone.  This type of depression is often deemed to be “organic” in nature.

The neuropsychological treatment of “Vascular Dementia” is to first determine the exact nature of the deficits through testing.  If the patient is experiencing psychological symptoms of depression or delusions, the clinician must determine if the patient is aware of their abnormal state.  For example, psychotherapy is appropriate for an adjustment problem in a self-aware person, but inappropriate for a severely depressed person with no awareness of their symptoms.  Neuropsychologists use the patient’s remaining cognitive strengths to compensate for their deficits.  Please leave comments regarding this article in the space provided below.