Health

New findings for Alzheimer`s disease victims
by Ioana Madalina Tantareanu

It was discovered that offering simple training to people struggling to care for loved ones with Alzheimer's disease eases their burden. Moreover, it even can keep patients out of nursing homes for an extra 1 1/2 years. Alzheimer`s disease afflicts one in eight people 65 and older, and nearly one in two people over 85 and is frequently met, because more than 5 million Americans are living with Alzheimer's disease. As the time passes and population ages, Alzheimer's is steadily rising. Richard Suzman of the National Institute on Aging said "I don't think society and policymakers have fully grasped the future magnitude of what we're up against, and how massive an operation we have to begin ... to deal with this." NYU's Mittelman says customized training can help caregivers ease the chaos that the Eckerts battled through, and proved it with a one-of-a-kind experiment. She made a test on 406 elderly New Yorkers caring for spouses with Alzheimer's and were divided in two: half received training tailored to their family's unique needs and half Half got today's standard: a list of Alzheimer's resources.Mittelman tracked these families for up to 17 years. Custom-trained caregivers kept their loved ones out of a nursing home for an average of 1 1/2 years longer than their untrained counterparts. The caring of one pacient cost $60,000 per year and that's a savings of $90,000 per patient, Mittelman reported last fall in the journal Neurology. The training was simple:there were weekly meetings with social workers, who assessed each family's circumstances, discussed how Alzheimer's worsens, and tought coping skills. Caregivers were given phone numbers to call counselors for more advice whenever they wanted. Trained caregivers experienced less depression and fewer physical health problems. A similar program that mixes in-home and telephone training, sessions that include role-playing to let caregivers practice the coping skills they're learning at the National Institutes of Health. The results of the study reflected better results:trained caregivers report improved quality of life, and feel they do a better job.

by Ioana Madalina Tantareanu for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

PocketNews is a new real-time news broadcaster delivering the latest and hottest news right to your pocket ! With global clients who want to be kept up to date, PocketNews is everyone's way of keeping in touch with the World.

posted by Blog TechSource @ 1:58 PM