title: Understanding and diagnosing senile dementia.
abstract: Dementia is one of the most common syndromes afflicting the aged, and it should be ranked as a major cause of death. Senile dementia and Alzheimer's disease should now be viewed as one and the same. Familiarity with the cardinal signs of dementia enables the physician to differentiate it from various "functional" disorders. Before making a diagnosis of senile dementia, it is important to exclude all forms of treatable disease, including toxic, metabolic, infectious, neoplastic, and traumatic disorders. Most older patients with dementia will be found to have Alzheimer's disease, for which no definitive treatment is available.
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000145:classification; D002140:California; D003704:Dementia / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000401:mortality / Q000473:pathology; D006801:Humans