Treatment
If the symptoms of alcohol dementia are caught early enough, the effects may be reversed. The person must stop drinking and start on a healthy diet, replacing the lost vitamins, including, but not limited to, thiamine. Recovery is more easily achievable for women than men, but in all cases it is necessary that they have the support of family and friends and abstain from alcohol.
There is a case study of a patient who was treated with memantine; the patient was a 71 year old female who was treated with memantine for five weeks, at a dosage of 30 mg/daily to help improve memory and cognitive functioning. After the five week treatment the patient had shown improvement on the Mini-Mental State Examination from 18 to 22 points and her tests on the CERAD (Consortium to Establish a Registry for Alzheimer’s Disease) improved from zero to five on the Wordlist Recall and six to eight on the Drawing test. This is the only study of its kind but has promising outcomes for further research.
Read more about this topic: Alcohol Dementia
Famous quotes containing the word treatment:
“I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but never with a view to injury and wrongdoing. Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course. Similarly, I will not give to a woman a pessary to cause abortion. I will keep pure and holy both my life and my art.”
—Hippocrates (c. 460–c. 370 B.C.)
“Our treatment of both older people and children reflects the value we place on independence and autonomy. We do our best to make our children independent from birth. We leave them all alone in rooms with the lights out and tell them, “Go to sleep by yourselves.” And the old people we respect most are the ones who will fight for their independence, who would sooner starve to death than ask for help.”
—Margaret Mead (1901–1978)
“To me, nothing can be more important than giving children books, It’s better to be giving books to children than drug treatment to them when they’re 15 years old. Did it ever occur to anyone that if you put nice libraries in public schools you wouldn’t have to put them in prisons?”
—Fran Lebowitz (20th century)