Alzheimer as a Challenge to Health Systems, Crescent Life Expectation, and the Mmse as a Tool in the Screening of Dementities

Abstract

For the first time in history, most people can live up to 60 years old, in a way that a child born in 2015 in Brazil has a life expectancy 20 years longer than a person born 50 years ago. Having this new circumstances, there are some new health related challenges to be overcome even faster than before. The great question is: can a human being enter their senior years with a nice life quality nowadays? The major obstacles in reaching this goal are the so-called chronic and non transmissible diseases, such as Alzheimer's Disease, which have been doubling cases every 5 years in people between the ages of 65 and 85, according to recent epidemiological studies. Having a healthy lifestyle can help prevent, slow them down or even in some cases, reverse the condition, but the treatment can not rely solely on this individual care, it must be a wide public health concern as well. Alzheimer's Disease consists of an insidious, progressive decline of memory and other cortical functions, such as speech, concept and judgment, which happens through mainly two acting mechanisms that lead to brain atrophy in areas as the temporal lobe and the hippocampus, that are responsible for recent memory. There is also an atrophy of some brain nuclei as Meynert's and the septal, which are responsible for the acetylcholine production which is a neurotransmitter mediator of cognitive activity. All of this causes the individual with an advanced stage of this condition to lose their capability to perform even the simpler tasks of their daily routine, including communication, comprehension, personal hygiene, eating and connecting with others; they become entirely dependent. Therefore, this article intends to promote a way of tracking the dementia through the MEEM, alongside the management of patients in order to prevent that early cases reach the lowest point, and making it so the senior life quality only increases.