Cognitive impairment, concept and types

With advancing age, all types of memory (short, medium and long term), should remain with little change with respect to the young adult, except perhaps for memory. immediate memory, what is the What more suffers with aging. Similarly, verbal ability, vocabulary, comprehension, and management skills remain almost intact with age.

However, it is possible to find a certain slowdown in the processing of all cognitive areas, without this implying a decrease in them, since it can be expected that the final response is intact, although somewhat slower.

Loss of memory and skills is what characterizes the processes of cognitive impairment

How is it produced?

Clinical reality says that some people of geriatric age, without fulfilling the diagnostic criteria for dementia, complain of their memory and in some cases a slight cognitive impairment can be observed in them. memory and skills tests . This situation receives, among several names, the denomination of mild cognitive impairment.

Mild cognitive impairment is defined as the decline in cognitive functions to a mild degree, either due to alterations attributable to the physiological process of aging or due to other factors and that in general does not affect the performance of the usual tasks of the day to day. For its part, it is characterized by the progressive alteration of cognitive function that disables the person from carrying out any of these so-called activities of daily life.

According to the degree of difficulty to carry out the activities of daily living that the patient presents, it will be classified as mild cognitive impairment if it does not suffer any impairment, or if there is already incapacity for activities of daily living, it will be classified as mild, moderate, or severe dementia.

Types or degrees of cognitive impairment

According to the degree of deficit that each patient presents in the different psychometric tests that quantify cognitive and functional functions in daily life, will classify the disease as mild cognitive impairment or dementia (mild, moderate, or severe). The general characteristics of the degrees are as follows:

Mild cognitive impairment

Mild impairment of memory and some higher cognitive functions; often cannot be objectified, without no repercussion about the patient's daily life.

Mild dementia

It begins to affect the functional situation of the patient. They begin to slightly resent the activities of daily living. The patient usually has a certain degree of disorientation in time and space, forget the names of well-known people, they are evidenced problems with recent memory and may present some changes in your behavior (irritability, bad mood, etc.).

Moderate dementia

The symptom cognitive are made obvious, affecting various areas of the patient's life (difficulty in understanding orders, learning difficulties, time-space disorientation, errors in numerical calculation functions, etc.). The impairment of the instrumental activities of daily life begins to become evident and slowly and progressively affect basic activities of daily living. The affectation of the behavior is frequent, appearing agitation, aggressiveness, anxiety or even depression.

Severe dementia

Most of the time it is impossible to communicate with the patient, he does not understand what is being said and what he is saying does not make sense. There are total memory loss remote and inability to write and care for himself. The patient is totally dependent for basic activities of daily life.

Dementia

It is defined as the acquired deterioration of memory associated, at least, with that of another of the cognitive functions and that affects the daily life of people who suffer from it.

The cognitive functions affected are mainly:

• the short, medium or long term.
• language areas (comprehension, elaboration, vocabulary).
• manual skills (praxias).
• the brain functions of solving problems or executing actions.
• personality traits, which are commonly affected in cases of dementia involving the frontal areas of the brain.