Considerations on the Lifespan from Diagnosis to Death in Alzheimer’s Disease

Background: Evolution of Alzheimer’s disease from the onset of dementia to death is estimated by different authors as lasting between a few months and 21 years.

Objective: To verify whether there is an explanation for this dispersion of evolution of cases, starting only from clinical information.

Methods: A number of 75 cases of patients dead between 01. Jan. 2011 and 31. Dec. 2012 were analyzed. Data on deaths was collected from the County’s Statistics Institute; other information was collected from patient charts.

Results: Gender, onset age, co-morbidities and treatment do not influence the dispersion of cases. Dispersion started at less than one month from diagnosis and ended 11.42 years after diagnosis. At the age of 65, a boom in incidence of dementia symptoms as a stage of the disease was recorded. Dispersion of cases was divided into 3 evolution groups: the majority between 0-3 years, followed by 3-6 years and 6-11.42 years, as a Gaussian curve.

Conclusions:

1. The age of 64-65 may be considered a high risk age and it should be monitored accordingly.
2. The question of how just was Kraepelin’s disjunction into pre-senile and senile dementias arises.

In terms of evolution, according to dispersion, there are versions of the same disease or different diseases in pathogenesis depth, but similar in symptomatology.