Neurological Disorder Example

Neurological Disorder Example Neurological Disorder â€" Essay Example > Neurological disorders are disorders that affect the body’s nervous system. These disorders are directly traceable to structural destruction of the brain tissues or nerves, biochemical imbalances or electrical abnormalities that have a major effect on the cognitive processes like memory. Dementia is an example of the neurological disorders that is characterized by a general deterioration of emotional, intellectual and motor functioning due to progressive pathological changes in the brain. Dementia of Alzheimer’s type has no cure and is the most common form of dementia that worsens with recognizable stages. This paper discusses the physiological basis of dementia of Alzheimer’s type, its prognosis, treatment considerations and impact it has on self and family unit. According to WHO (2006), dementia arise when there is disturbance of multiple higher cortical functions that include thinking, memory, orientation, calculation, comprehension, learning capacity, language and judgme nt. This condition which mainly affects the older people can be caused by various medical conditions and abuse of drugs or alcohol that cause negative changes in the cognitive functioning of an individual. Some of these causes include infectious diseases of HIV and syphilis, variety of traumas to the brain that destroy blood vessels such as stroke, severe head damage, introduction of poisonous or toxic substances to the body, and diseases such as Huntington’s and Parkinson’s. Based on their etiology, Durand (2006) identifies five classes of dementia: dementia of Alzheimer’s type; Vascular dementia; dementia due to other general medical conditions; substance induced persisting dementia; and dementia due to multiple etiologies. Dementia of the Alzheimer’s typeThis is the most common form of dementia and is characterized by both cortical senile plaques (microscopic lesions in the neurons) and neurofibrillary tangles (twisted and distorted nerve fibers). The primary symptoms o f Alzheimer’s disease include cognitive deficits that develop gradually and steadily- particularly, impairment in memory, judgment, orientation and reasoning (Durand, 2006). Individuals with Alzheimer’s disease are unable to integrate new information and thus fail to learn new associations. They forget important things and are prone to lose objects. According to Scarmeas et al (2007), the early signs of the disorder include failure of memory and concentration, irritability, and mild difficulties in recalling words and names. As the disorder develops, the patients tend to lose interest in others thus becoming socially isolated, they become confused, agitated, depressed, anxious or even combative. Further, patients may display other cognitive disturbances such as apraxia (impaired motor functioning), aphasia (difficulty with language), agnosia (failure to recognize objects) and difficulty in such activities like planning, sequencing, organizing or abstracting information. These c ognitive impairments represent a significant decline from previous abilities since they have a serious negative impact on the occupational and social functioning. PrognosisThe prognosis for individuals with dementia of the Alzheimer’s type does not seem to be good. These patients expect to live for about 8 years after the diagnosis. However, other factors such as the individual’s overall health may make the life expectancy to vary from one patient to another and some may live for 20- 25 years after the diagnosis (Gordeau Hillier, 2005). Generally, the life expectancy for these patients is shortened, but it is not easy to predict the exact time for each individual patient. Qizilbash (2002) argues that the time varies because there is no definitive biological marker of the disease onset. Therefore, the duration and long term prognosis depend on the methodology used to mark the onset time of dementia. Besides, a delay is likely to occur between the onset of mild symptoms and cle arly diagnosed dementia.