Exacerbation of dementia after the earthquake and tsunami in Japan
| Autor: | Hiroyuki Arai, Manabu Kodama, Mari Ootsuki, Katsutoshi Furukawa |
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| Rok vydání: | 2011 |
| Předmět: |
Male
medicine.medical_specialty Exacerbation Poison control Suicide prevention Occupational safety and health Japan Injury prevention Earthquakes Medicine Dementia Humans Psychiatry Aged Aged 80 and over business.industry Public health Human factors and ergonomics medicine.disease Neurology Tsunamis Female Neurology (clinical) Medical emergency business |
| Zdroj: | Journal of neurology. 259(6) |
| ISSN: | 1432-1459 |
| Popis: | On Friday, March 11, 2011, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake hit Japan, which was followed by enormous tsunamis that caused numerous casualties and serious damage in the coastal cities [1]. After the disaster, many elderly people including patients with dementia were evacuated to asylums such as gymnasiums and halls because their houses were destroyed. Many of the patients visited our clinic after evacuation, and most of them got significantly worse with their dementia symptoms including behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD). We here examined changes in cognitive functions and BPSD with minimental state examination (MMSE) and neuropsychiatric inventory-questionnaire (NPI-Q), respectively, in patients with Alzheimer’s disease after the earthquake. We analyzed three groups including subjects who did not suffer from the disaster (group 1, M/F = 9/11, age 74.3 ± 8.3), subjects who had experienced the disaster but did not stay at an evacuation site (group 2, M/F = 9/9, age 75.6 ± 7.8), and subjects who were forced to stay at an evacuation site (group 3, M/F = 8/9, age 77.8 ± 8.5). We compared the altered values (after-before) of each test in the three groups. Both groups 2 and 3 showed a decline in MMSE compared to group 1 although a significant difference was observed only between ‘‘group 1 and 2’’ and ‘‘group 1 and 3’’. Concerning the NPI-Q both group 2 and 3 exhibited exacerbation of BPSD and the significant difference was observed between ‘‘group 1 and 2’’, ‘‘group 1 and 3’’ and ‘‘group 2 and 3’’ (Fig. 1). Disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, and tornados must be extremely stressful to elderly people. On the other hand, to change their circumstances to inferior conditions such as evacuation sites should affect their mental and cognitive condition more severely [2]. Nobody likes to live together with many other people in a big hall with people having poor hygiene. Not only physical but also mental care to the elderly who suffered from the disaster is now needed. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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