Problem: Alzheimer's Disease
A 79 year-old woman was brought to her primary health care provider by her daughter to address the progressive increase in memory impairment she had observed in her mother over the past several months. The daughter noticed a gradual worsening of her mother's ability to remember and noted that her mother had difficulty finding words. Her daughter also detected a general decline in her mother's self-care and in the housekeeping at her mother's place. Her mother was engaging and alert, and her general neurological examination was normal. However, she tended to use very vague terms when talking often referring to "things" and "stuff". She was able to give her name, but she did not know her current age, and she stated an incorrect birth month, although she quickly became aware of this and corrected it. She did not know what year she was born or the name of the current US President.
For each week, choose one case study to present. The following must be addressed:
Give an overview of the diagnosis including risk factors and how they cause or contribute to adaptation or pathogenesis.
Give an in-depth discussion of the pathophysiology of your diagnosis as it occurs over time; include signs, symptoms, diagnostic studies and the underlying pathophysiologic process causing these signs and symptoms. Support this pathophysiology with high level evidence.
Summarize treatments and outcomes in terms of pathophysiologic alterations. Need Assignment Help?
Include a discussion of the symptoms that your patient is exhibiting and discuss treatments specifically aimed for your patient.
Support your case discussion with current (in the past 5 years) high level evidence. Patient information portals, disease association websites and other resources such as Up-to-date, Epocrates, Medscape, Mayo Clinic are not considered high levels of evidence and should be avoided for your presentations. While use of the course textbooks is permitted, a minimum of 3 high level citations outside of the course text is required. If you are unclear about what is considered high level evidence, please review content from your Evidence Based Nursing Practice Course.