Modern approaches to diagnostics of dementia

Borovetskaya Maria Andreevna

Dementia is a serious medical and social disease that does not respond to treatment. However, with the right choice of management tactics for patients with dementia, its course can be slowed down and alleviated. Therefore, it is important to diagnose the disease in a timely manner, even at the pre-dementia stage. Previously used diagnostic methods did not allow for a timely diagnosis, which makes it impossible to develop an effective approach to relieving the condition. For a long time, the ICD10, DSM-IV, and NINCDS-ADRDA criteria have been widely used to diagnose AD, based on the clinical manifestations of the disease and the severity of cognitive impairments. Conceptual changes in diagnostics in recent years are associated with the inclusion of biomarkers and criteria for the pre-dementia stage, which make it possible to diagnose at an early stage, and even to predict the development of the disease in advance, before the appearance of its first signs. The improvement of diagnostics is due to the active introduction of new laboratory and neuroimaging methods into clinical practice. Research continues in terms of the search for markers that reflect various links in the pathogenesis of the neurodegenerative process at the biochemical and molecular levels. Methods of functional diagnostics are also widely used: MRI, CT, PET, FDG-PET. An integrated approach to diagnostics is justified.

Keywords:dementia, neurocognitive impairment, diagnosis, neuroimaging, early diagnosis, pre-dementia diagnosis, biomarkers of disorders.