Dementia

...ba href=/dementia/a/b.

As their health deteriorates they become less able to communicate, less mobile, and increasingly reliant on nursing care.

Donepezil is used to treat mild-to-moderate Alzheimer's disease but its effectiveness in severe ba href=/dementia/a/b has not been assessed until now.

In their trial Bengt Winblad (Karolinska Institutet, Huddinge, Sweden) and colleagues recruited Alzheimer's patients over 50 years of age from 50 nursing homes in Sweden.

They assigned 95 patients to donepezil and 99 to a placebo for 6 months.

The investigators found that those on donepezil had improved cognition and ability to carry out daily activities when compared with those on placebo.

More patients on the active drug had side effects than those in the placebo group but these were usually transient and mild to moderate in severity.

Professor Winblad states: "Donepezil slows, and can reverse some aspects of deterioration of cognition and function in individuals with severe Alzheimer's who live in nursing homes." ### See also accompanying Comment.

Contact: Bengt Winblad, Professor/Director Karolinska Institutet, Neurotec Dept, Novum, Floor 5, Division of Geriatrics, SE-141 57 Huddinge, Sweden.

T) +46 8 585 854 74 / +46 70 632 67 71 (mobile) Contact: Joe Santangelo j.santangelo@elsevier.com Lancet -View the latest Alzheimer's News.

-View all the latest Medical News Headlines.

-Get the latest medical news in your email every week with our newsletter.

Contact Our Medical News Editors For any corrections of fac...

...ba href=/dementia/a/b, hospital visits, deaths (humans, animals: cats are especially prone to being killed, by vengeful children) and funerals; marital infidelity, sexual promiscuity, divorce and its effect upon impressionable children, the temptation to succumb to despair in an atmosphere poisoned by "repetitive meaninglessness." Rarely has the dysfunctional middle-class Caucasian-American family been so relentlessly dissected and analyzed, and rarely with such patience, sympathy and verve.

Like her contemporaries Bobbie Ann Mason, Joy Williams, Ann Beattie and Lorrie Moore, among others, Antonya Nelson writes stories dense with the texture of domesticity that move with the wayward and seemingly unpredictable energies of life, more likely to trail off enigmatically at their endings than to decisively, or dramatically, conclude in the way of the classic short story.

In such fiction, meanings are likely to be oblique, hidden; epiphanies are likely to be murmured asides, not declarations to be underscored; the reader is placed in the position of a young woman who visits her neurologically impaired father in the intensive care unit of a hospital in Montana: "Every day Jilly felt as if she'd entered into another of his dreams with him, a surreal place where all the parts were understandable but completely mixed up, a confusion of time, character and event."A willful confusion is evident in "Dick," the first story in the collection, which begins with a luridly gorgeous hint of paradoxes to com...

...ba href=/dementia/a/b.

But the medical team didn't think it was a wise thing to do and discussed why with the family.

"Once they understood what they were hearing, we came to some consensus," McDowell said of the patient's relatives.

"What they needed to hear was, 'so we've done everything we can?

' " She suggested patients ask doctors about their beliefs and discuss how they could affect patient care.

"It's a matter of matching patient expectations and the provider's expectation," McDowell said.

.....Advertisement.....

Site Index News - Archives - Business - Columnists - Corrections - Health - Local News - National News - Politics - Stocks - Weather Sports - Auto Racing - Baseball - College Sports - Dazzle Basketball - Golf - High School - Other Local Sports - Outdoors - Pro Football - UVa - Viper Hockey - Virginia Tech Entertainment - Arts - Dining - Events Calendar - Extra - Hangout - Inside Out - Lottery - Movie Reviews - Music - Personals - TV Listings Local - Celebrations - Community Groups - The Lake - Message Boards - Neighbors - New River Valley - Newspaper in Education - Obituaries - Opinion/Editorials - Travel/Visitors - YourPix Online Features - Blogs !

- - Contests - - CRAM - CRAM Jams - Find a Mortgage - Find a Restaurant - Movie Listings - Multimedia - Photo Galleries - Podcasts - RSS Feeds - Stocks - Webcast - Yellow Pages Do Business With Us - Get the Paper !

- - Buy a Photo - - Contact Us - Manage Your Paper - Manage Your Profile - Online Advertising - Place a C...