How to prevent a delayed Alzheimer's diagnosis.

VOL 58, NO 1 / JANUARY 2009 9 www.jfponline.com IN THIS ARTICLE tient thinks this is a natural consequence of age. Fran B, a 72-year-old, presents with complaints of memory problems that began about 6 months ago. She’s worried about her son and has had increasing diffi culty concentrating, sleeping, and keeping track of her things. If these were your patients, whom would you screen for dementia? Would you decide whether to screen based on your “gut,” or a defi ned set of criteria? Would you have several screening tools on hand, and know enough about them to determine which one might be best suited for a particular patient? If you make decisions about screening based on your gut or aren’t sure which tools are best for which patients, you’re far from alone. Cognitive impairment, particularly in the early stages, can be diffi cult and time-consuming to detect, and community physicians fail to diagnose mild-to-moderate dementia more than 50% of the time.1-5 Family members and caregivers often overlook declines in cognitive function, as well. In a study of 741 caregivers of patients with AD, an average of 4 months went by between the time symptoms were fi rst noticed and the patient was seen by a physician—and 22% of the caregivers waited more than a year.6 How to prevent a delayed Alzheimer’s diagnosis