Hi,
You have mentioned just
dementia once and alzheimer's the next time. Because there are numerous causes for dementia which would determine the course this disease would take in the patient. Alzheimer's being one of the most common causes for dementia.
Firstly, the most important symptom of dementia is
memory loss or forgetfulness. The rapidity or the rate at which this symptom progresses varies with the cause of the dementia. Recent memory is lost much earlier that remote memory and that is what you are seeing in your sister as well.
The management of dementia is multimodal, that is, it involves both drug therapy as well as non-pharmacological therapy. In the latter, to name a few, there are interventions like 'behavioral management' for any behavioral disturbances, 'cognitive retraining' to help the patient cope with deterioration of cognition i.e memory loss etc and 'psychoeducation' where the family members are explained all about the illness and what to expect from it. This is administered by a trained
psychologist.
Drugs are used for mainly two reasons in dementia, one is for severe behavior disturbances that are not controlled from the above mentioned ways and another is to help improve the
cognitive impairment. There are scientifically proven drugs approved for this condition like
donepezil and memantine.
Kindly discuss with the qualified
psychiatrist.
Hope this helps,
Dr Anjana rao