Essay Sample on Growing Concern of Alzheimer's Disease in UK

Introduction

There has been much talk within the medical sphere in the United Kingdom of the growing concern of Alzheimer's disease, amongst other forms of dementia. According to Qiu, Kivipelto and Strauss (2009), Alzheimer is the most common type of dementia in the UK. (Alzheimer's Disease International (2018) indicates that in the next two decades, the number of people suffering from different forms of dementia in the United Kingdom, between the ages of 60 and 90 will almost certainly double. According to Office for National Statistics (2018), the number of the ageing population in the UK is on the rise and currently, the number of people above the age of 65 years amounts to about 12 million. The 12 million is composed of the aged population with 1.6 million people above the age of 85 years, more than 500,000 people above the age of 90 years, 5.4 million people above the age of 75 years and 14,430 people centenarians (ONS, 2018). To this effect, the government has put aside considerable resources, strategies, policies and personnel to facilitate the early diagnosis of dementia as one of the means to combat the high mortality rates caused by Alzheimer type of dementia in the U.K (Dubois et al., 2015). There additionally are policies to ensure that all medical institutions refer clients to mental health specialists if they suspect the patient to have dementia (Maxwell, 2005). Medically, older people have been identified to be more susceptible to dementia, which is a mental illness characterized by declining memory and reduced thinking capacity. The WHO health report (2019) affirms that globally, 50 million people are living with dementia, with 5-8% of this population being the age of 60 and above. The health report also noted that there are 10 million new occurrences of dementia annually, these usually go unnoticed due to lack of proper early diagnosis mechanisms and confusion of dementia symptoms with old age bodily malfunctions (Kitamura et al., 2015).

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On its own, England accounted for 850,000 of the 45 million number aforementioned (Dementia Statistics Hub, 2018) living with dementia; this figure is expected to hit the one million mark in six years and over two million by 2050. There seems to be a discrepancy between the frameworks and mechanisms put in place to curb and treat dementia occurrence in the U.K. and the reality on the ground (Singleton, Mukadam, Livingston and Sommerlad, 2017). From the said statistics, it is likely that that the fact of dementia in the U.K. will not change; hence, it is prudent how and why early diagnosis of dementia should be looked into earnestly.

Alzheimer's disease is the most prevalent form of dementia, which not only brings with it psychological, physical and economic ramifications to those suffering from it but social changes to those affected by it (WHO and Alzheimer's Disease International, 2012). At an old age, cognitive impairments are the first signs of Alzheimer disease and only occur at the early stages of disease development (Martini et al., 2014). Any other sign at early stages of the illness relates to the sensory impairment, hence it is difficult to tell, without a proper and timely diagnosis, if an older person has Alzheimer or any other form of dementia or if they are simply ageing. Andrews (2015) established that mild cognitive impairment commonly affects older people. The mental strength of the majority of older people experiences a faster rate of decline in their mental strength than younger people. Following its onset, as the author argues, the patient will frequently get lost in familiar places and often forget things. Andrews (2015) explains that this then progress to intermediate and late stages of the condition where the symptoms become more serious. The patient person may soon have no self-awareness at all.

Currently, medical research has not been able to come up with a definitive test for diagnosing Alzheimer's disease or any of the other known causes of dementia. Thus, the premise is that multiple tests and scans from different sources are done, and the results pooled to arrive at inference on whether someone has dementia or not (CPRD, 2018). These procedures and scans are both expensive and time-consuming, and even after undergoing the myriad of procedures and tests, the findings are usually conveyed as either "probable" or "possible". There is hence a conflicting inference (Alzheimer's Disease International (2017).

Currently, the NHIS (2016) guidelines state that people with noteworthy memory loss without other symptoms of dementia, such as personality or behaviour changes, may be classified as having a Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI). Medically, MCI is still considered a relatively new concept and more study is needed to understand the linkage between MCI and later development of dementia (CPRD, 2018). This underlines this paper's fundamental assumption that tests used in the early diagnosis of dementia are inaccurate and lead to a waterfall of different scenarios. For people who undergo early diagnosis, the path for deciding medical interventions is not clear as it is not applicable to prescribe dementia treatments to someone who is not yet a dementia patient and at the same time (Dhedhi, Swinglehurst and Russell, 2014). The possibility that the diagnosed patient may eventually develop dementia necessitates the need to start them on dementia treatments.

The yearly spending of the U.K. on treating dementia, especially amongst older people, is estimated at PS26 billion per year (Alzheimer's Disease International 2018). This study assumes that this amount can significantly be reduced if effective means of early diagnosis is implemented. According to Woods et al. (2018), the cost involved (to the state) has made the diagnosis and treatment of dementia a national priority, with efforts being focussed towards its prevention, awareness, research, and early diagnosis. Alzheimer's Disease International (2018) identified that out the various initiatives that have been put across as means of early diagnosis of dementia; stigma is the critical challenge working against these efforts. This has been the vital pitfall to encouraging people to commit to early diagnosis. Diagnosis statistics in England by Alzheimer's Disease International (2018), established that 42% of those who have dementia had been diagnosed. Thus, 58 percentiles of the populous suffering of dementia do not undergo diagnoses or are misdiagnosed. The diagnosis statistics, as CPRD (Clinical Practice Datalink, 2018) established, are an increase from 2005, especially amongst older people in the U.K. Besides, older citizens in the age sets of 80-89 and 90 and above, are the most adversely affected by dementia with a prevalence rate of 60%. The 60% prevalence rate, especially amongst the old in the U.K. is high due to late diagnosis or improper application of early diagnosis techniques, amongst other factors (Winblad et al., 2016). The study by CPRD further established that in Northern Ireland an...