Three Minute Screen for Lewy Body Dementia

Tuesday, 17 November 2015 11:23

Jim Schuster, CELA

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Continuing our focus on dementia during Alzheimer’s Disease awareness month, let’s take a deeper look at Lewy Body dementia (LBD). This dementia can be difficult for a doctor to diagnose. Now thanks James E. Galvin, M.D., M.P.H., one of the most prominent neuroscientists in the country, we have a new three minute screen screen for clinicians to judge how likely it is that a patient has LBD. This is good news for spouses and caregivers who are at their wits end trying to understand what is going on. Perhaps more importantly an accurate diagnosis can prevent the situation from getting worse by medication. LBD patients typically have sensitivities to many drugs prescribed for Alzheimer’s and hallucinations. Indeed the Lewy Body Dementia Association reports a “severe sensitivity to medications used to treat hallucinations.”

Here is the news story New, three-minute test effectively diagnoses Lewy Body dementia
and here is the screen (the news story has a link to the screen and the explanation of it) :