Management of the demented patient

Abstract

If dementia is but the final common pathway of a number of conditions affecting the brain, it must be that the course of any one patient’s illness will be determined by the pathology underlying the syndrome. While the prognosis may not invariably be hopeless — in the pre-senium anything up to 25% of all patients presenting with a picture of dementia may have treatable causes — it has to be conceded that at present all that can be anticipated in the majority of cases is an inexorable progression of the disease.