Aim: To gain a deeper understanding around the prolonged diagnosis time for Alzheimer‘s desease.
Introduction: The world population is getting older. Correspondingly the number of old age sicknesses (like Alzheimer's disease (AD), dementias) is rising in the populations. These patients require custody, medicine and that takes a lot of money and resources from the country.
Methods: There were two multiple choice/short answer surveys done. One for doctors (psychiatrists, neurologists, general practitioners) and the other for the the patients care givers. The surveys were administered in the hospitals in Vilnius. The data were evaluated by SPSS program (α=0.05).
Results: 50 doctors completed the surveys. Doctors emphasize that just about 14% of patients’ care givers are aware of the possibility for the genetic screening for AD and are interested in pursuing it. Moreover, according to the surveys, patients with cognitive disorders seek help when they are about 65–75 years old and 70% of the doctors believe that this is too late. 68% of the doctors agree that the society does not have enough knowledge about dementias.
50 patients’ caregivers completed the surveys: 26% – AD, 28% – vascular dementia, 46% – non-defined. The first contact with their doctors varied greatly among different dementia patients: AD – waited for 2.8y, vascular dementia – 1.46y, non-defined – 0.87y. Even though patients’ caregivers indicated that they received enough information from their doctor, they admitted that they had no or not enough knowledge concerning the disease before. They also highlighted that it was hard to find information in Lithuanian language.
Conclusion: The research showed that people do not have enough knowledge about dementias and have limited access to information. This is one of the main reasons why the diagnostics is late. Considering the mental health is a stigmatic topic in the world, the fact that people do not know about the dementias might be the problem in the whole world.1