内容简介：
Although AlzheimerAs disease represents the most frequent cause of dementia, it is not the only cause. Cerebrovascular disease and other degenerative and metabolic disorders have similar profound and debilitating consequences. This wide-ranging compendium of writings by leading educators and physicians is aimed at helping practitioners achieve one of the nationAs primary health care goalsAreducing the number of people who require assistance for personal care activities by the year 2000. In this balanced examination of the frequency and characteristics of dementia and cognitive impairment, contributors base their observations and conclusions on data collected within an ethnically diverse registry of elderly people who use community-based health care services. They explore topics ranging from familial AlzheimerAs disease, prion diseases, and dementia associated with poststroke major depression to vascular dementia, dementia pugilistica, and head trauma as a risk factor for AlzheimerAs disease. These experts also discuss diagnostic and treatment issues, as well as the thought-provoking topics of ethical questions involving dementia and dementia as it relates to health care reform. Practitioners in health care and related services, providers, and policy makers will find the research, interpretation, and collective wisdom presented here essential for sound decision making about the way medicine deals with dementia in the elderly.