Screening of Cognitive Impairment: Undiagnosed or Over Diagnosis in a Vulnerable Population

LISSO, JULIETA; KOCHEN SILVIA; MEDEL N,; SEVILLANO Z; SOLIS P

Journal of Neuroscience and Cognitive Studies

Remedy Publications LLC.

Lugar: NYC; Año: 2020 vol. 2 p. 1009 - 1015

2282-1619

The goals of our project is to act on effective dementia interventions with a focus on vulnerablepopulations. In 2016 the Hospital El Cruce launched a specialist medical service for elderlypatients free of charge in F. Varela, one of the poorest areas of the Province of Buenos Aires witha population of over two million people. Our Institute ENyS, established a Memory Clinic (MC)as part of this service. The patients referred by GPs to the MC, in two years, we found that noneof the patients referred reporting symptoms of cognitive decline or diagnosis of dementia hadbeen cognitively evaluated. Mostly female patients were enrolled in our study. Patients with feweducational qualifications were predominant. For all patients referred to MC, slightly less thanhalf of women and more than half of men had a pathological cognitive evaluation. We observeda correlation between low level of formal education and greater cognitive deterioration. Oneinteresting finding is that most of patients with cognitive impairment had functional autonomy.Of all the patients, only 53 (14.4%) met the criteria for dementia. More than half of the patientswith probable diagnosis of dementia did was not receiving any type of pharmacological treatment,while a quarter of the population without dementia was receiving the treatment often used for suchcondition. A long-term deliverable will be to improve public policy in F. Varela around dementiaprevention, diagnosis, treatment, care and support.