- Three word delayed recall: the patient is told three words (ex: blue, dog, pen) and asked to repeat them. About 5 minutes later the patient is asked to repeat them. If the patient cannot remember all three words, even after hints like one is an animal, they may need further evaluation.
- Mini cognition test combines with three word recall: the patient is given three simple nouns and asked to repeat them. Next, the patient is asked to draw the face of a clock on a piece of paper and put the hands at a specific time. After the clock is drawn, the patient is asked to recall the three words. If the patient remembers only two, one, or none of the words, the clock should be evaluated. If the clock is abnormal, the patient needs further evaluation. Also is the patient remembers all three words but makes an abnormal clock they would need further evaluation.
- Coin counting: The patient is asked "If i give you a nickel, a quarter, a dime, and a penny, how much money have I given you?" If the patient cannot come up with 41 cents as the answer, they need further evaluation.
These are just a few ways in which a person's cognitive ability can be evaluated. Check out these links below to read more about the testing methods and warning signs for Alzheimer's Disease.
Cognitive Testing: www.alz.org/professional_and_researchers_14306.asp
10 Warning signs: www.alz.org/alzheimers_disease_know_the_10_signs.asp
I found this post to be very helpful and educational. I have recently found out that a dear friend of mine's father is in the early stages of Alzheimer's so this hits close to home for me. I found the 10 warning signs helpful and plan on sending all the information from the past two weeks to my friends family. I found especially interesting the discussion in class today about the music therapy and how it may be beneficial for patients and am planning on doing more research on the topic or hopefully someone will post a blog discussing it. Thanks for the information!
ReplyDeleteIt seems as if these warning signs and tests are a relatively good way of evaluating early stages of Alzheimer's. Although I am a little skeptical that naturally with older age some of these tests might produce a subjective analysis. However I as well found the note on music therapy to be very interesting as I am currently taking topics of physiology in which we covered Parkinson's Disease, where we had a guest speaker who is a Parkinson's patient but uses rapping as her method of overcoming it. Here is the attached link.
ReplyDeletehttp://azstarnet.com/news/local/article_f2daed2b-3abb-51fc-9161-e912c93f3dee.html