Current Trends in the Epidemiology of Dementia and the Management of Patients with Cognitive Impairments

Abstract

Dementia is the most important medical-social problem, whose significance increases each year because of increases in the proportion of elderly people in the population. Improvements in diagnostic methods create the conditions for earlier detection and treatment of dementing diseases. It is now 20 years since one of the main antidementia drugs – memantine – was registered in Russia. Its appearance widened the potential of treatment of patients with dementia and led to the development of the current care system for this category of patients. Moscow and most districts of the Russian Federation have opened specialist clinics and memory centers (clinical neuropsychology centers) employing state-of-the-art neuropsychological test methods. This created the conditions for multicenter studies in which 1250 patients with cognitive impairments have now taken part. Many educational measures and social projects have taken place, providing improvements in awareness of the problems of dementia in both medicine and society in general. Screening programs have been introduced for the early detection of cognitive impairments and programs for the psychological support of people caring for dementia patients have been instituted.