Treatment
The aim of the management is the prevention of further cerebrovascular lesions. This includes administering antiplatelet drugs and controlling major vascular risk factors (hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, smoking and diabetes mellitus to mention a few).
The general management of dementia includes referral to community services, judgment and decision-making regarding legal and ethical issues (e.g., driving, capacity, advance directives), and consideration of caregiver stress.
Cholinesterase inhibitors such as galantamine have shown to be helpful in various randomized controlled trials. However their use is not licensed yet for this indication.
Behavioral and affective symptoms are particularly important in this patient group and deserve special consideration. These problems, if they develop, tend to be resistant to conventional psychopharmacological treatment and in many cases lead to hospital admission and placement in permanent care.
Read more about this topic: Multi-infarct Dementia
Famous quotes containing the word treatment:
“I feel that any form of so called psychotherapy is strongly contraindicated for addicts.... The question “Why did you start using narcotics in the first place?” should never be asked. It is quite as irrelevant to treatment as it would be to ask a malarial patient why he went to a malarial area.”
—William Burroughs (b. 1914)
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)
“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.)