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Neuropsychiatric Symptoms in Alzheimer's Disease Patients: Improving the Diagnosis
Florindo Stella*
Laboratory of Neurosciences, Department and Institute of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, University of São Paulo, Brazil
- Corresponding Author:
- Florindo Stella
Researcher at Laboratory of Neurosciences
Department and Institute of Psychiatry
Faculty of Medicine, University of São Paulo, Brazil
Tel: 55-19-3526.4245
Fax: 55-19-35264246
E-mail: fstella@rc.unesp.br
Received date: March 07, 2014; Accepted date: April 20, 2014; Published date: May 20, 2014
Citation: Stella F (2014) Neuropsychiatric Symptoms in Alzheimer’s Disease Patients: Improving the Diagnosis. J Alzheimers Dis Parkinsonism 4:146. doi:10.4172/2161-0460.1000146
Copyright: © 2014 Stella F, This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Neuropsychiatric symptoms have been strongly related to higher risk of cognitive decline, elevated clinical deterioration, increased morbidity and mortality, heavy caregiver burden, and early institutionalization. Patients suffering from dementia may be unable to describe their symptoms to the clinician, and caregivers frequently assume the responsibility to communicate the patient’s behavioral disturbances. However, the caregiver’s emotional distress my interfere with interpretation of the patient’s behavior, compromising the diagnosis accuracy. Accurate assessment is a crucial strategy to diagnose patient’s symptomatology. The aim of this work is to discuss some aspects related to disagreements between the caregiver report and the clinician impression on neuropsychiatric symptoms of patients with Alzheimer’s disease.
