The association between demographic factors, disease severity and the duration of symptoms at clinical presentation in elderly people with dementia

Objective: to determine the association between factors unrelated to the di sease process, the duration of symptoms and the degree of cognitive or func tional impairment in elderly patients presenting with dementia. Method: the living situation, educational level, age, gender and diagnosis based on standardized criteria were recorded fur 209 elderly patients prese nting to a memory clinic with dementia. Cognitive and functional deficits w ere measured with the cognitive section of the Cambridge Mental Disorders o f the Elderly Examination combined with the Mini-Mental State Examination a nd the abbreviated version of the Blessed dementia scale, respectively. Results: 129 patients had a diagnosis of probable Alzheimer's disease, 19 h ad probable ischaemic vascular dementia and 61 had mixed dementia, There wa s no effect of diagnosis on duration of symptoms or dementia severity at th e time of presentation. Patients living with a son or daughter were more fu nctionally impaired than those living alone or with a spouse. Males had hig her cognitive scores but did not have milder functional deficits, Patients with Only a primary-school education had a trend towards lower cognitive sc ores at presentation but did not have more functional deficits. Conclusions: the gender of the patient and the relationship to the carer ar e associated with cognitive and functional scores at the time of presentati on in patients with dementia.