Dementia and colloquially dementia can be briefly defined as the loss of intellectual functions at a rate that disrupts daily life activities. Dementia, in Greek De-mense is used to mean the disappearance of the mind. It is a word used to mean the loss and deterioration of the mind and cognitive functions over time. Dementia is not a single disease name, it is the general name given to all diseases that go with the impairment of memory and similar mental abilities.
Apart from the cognitive deterioration in childhood, dementia in adults is a disease that usually occurs in the advanced age group. Because of this feature, the slowdown in cognitive activity and intellectual destruction seen in an elderly person for years have been linked to the physiological aging process (senility) of the brain. However, clinical observations and the studies supporting them have revealed that dementia is different from a physiological aging process. As a matter of fact, the existence of people aged eighty or over ninety in our immediate environment, but maintaining their normal cognitive activities, is an observation that supports that aging alone is not the cause of dementia.
In reality, dementia is a clinical picture that occurs as a result of different pathological processes. In a way, as with epilepsy, the term dementia only describes a clinical manifestation. However, there are great differences in the incidence of dementias due to different etiological causes. Today, as a result of the prolongation of human life, there has been a significant increase in the proportion of the elderly population, and the number of patients with dementia has shown a parallel increase. This has accelerated the studies on dementia and neuropathological research has revealed a new fact. When the brains of people over the age of 65, with and without dementia were examined histopathologically, findings specific to Alzheimer’s disease, which was defined as a separate clinical and pathological condition in 1907, were found in 50% of the patients with dementia. In 15% of the cases, it was observed that the cause of dementia was due to vascular disorders. This picture is called vascular dementia. Alzheimer’s disease and vascular findings were found together in a group that comprised 14% to 25% of autopsy cases, and this picture was called mixed dementia.
As can be understood from these rates, Alzheimer’s disease constitutes half of the causes of dementia in the older age group. With dementias in the course of other neurodegenerative diseases (eg, Lewy bodies, Parkinson’s, etc.), this rate rises to 99%. Dementias in the course of brain tumors and other neurological diseases due to toxic, metabolic and endocrine causes, which are among the causes of dementia, constitute a very small group.
There is an increase in the incidence of many diseases affecting the brain, especially Alzheimer’s disease. It will be better to age with the detection of the causes, their elimination and the emergence of new treatment options.
