About our levels of care
Defining Dementia Care in San Diego
- Dementia is progressive problems with cognitive functioning that interfere with a person's ability to handle tasks of everyday living.
- Our Escondido assisted living facilities for dementia help educate family members on the following areas of symptoms. They may be subtle at first and develop over time before they get severe enough to interfere with functioning. Then when symptoms are present but the person is still well enough to do all of their usual activities, they might have mild cognitive impairment, or mild neurocognitive disorder. Yet in the end, they they may begin to have difficulties with tasks such as working, managing their finances, or driving, they are considered to have crossed the threshold into dementia, which is also called major neurocognitive disorder.
- Cognitive functioning has multiple levels of which include: Learning and retrieving information. Storing and remembering information. Planning and executing actions Speed of processing Motor/movement speed Language functioning Visual-spatial functioning.
- There are many causes of dementia. Alzheimer's disease is the best known and one of the most common. Other subtypes of dementia include vascular dementia, dementia with Lewy bodies, Parkinson's disease dementia, corticobasal degeneration, and primary progressive aphasia.
- While the treatments available for dementia are limited, and there is no way to cure these conditions, understanding the subtype(s) causing the symptoms is still helpful, because it allows patients and their families to plan and get appropriate care. Doctors may perform different kinds of tests to diagnose the cause of the dementia depending on the person's symptoms.
- Sometimes a person has more than one type of disease causing their dementia symptoms; in this situation, they have what's called “mixed” dementia. Some kinds of injuries, illnesses, or medical treatments can cause damage to the brain that affects cognitive functioning. When those changes occur at the time of the brain damage and stay stable afterward (do not get worse), they are not considered dementia, even if the changes are severe enough to interfere with daily function.