Alzheimer's disease is a progressive and incurable form of dementia that is ultimately fatal. Alzheimer's disease typically affects the elderly although some forms of the disease can affect people under the age of 65 (typically termed early onset Alzheimer's). Although there are many forms of dementia that can cause memory loss and mental problems, Alzheimer's disease can be distinguished from these other illnesses as a result of mental status testing, brain scans and certain blood tests.
Step 1
Look for the early signs and symptoms. Memory loss is a common early Alzheimer's symptom, and it may manifest as forgetting how to get to familiar locations, forgetting to pay for things (or paying too much or too little), as well as accidentally skipping meals. Other early symptoms include difficulty in finding words while speaking, difficulty in learning new things and adjusting to new situations, and a short attention span. Some patients also lose things as a result of putting them in a strange location, such as putting keys in the laundry machine.
Step 2
Have a trained professional give a full mental status exam. This exam involves a series of questions that test a patient's memory, reasoning, decision-making, spatial recognition, arithmetic skills and language skills (both verbal and written). It is designed to fully probe the patient's mental status and ability to do routine mental tasks. Although Alzheimer's disease can cause some typical symptoms, distinguishing it from other mental and memory problems requires a full mental status exam, which can take several hours and needs to be given by a doctor or other medical professional. It may involve short memory tests (such as seeing if the patient can remember three objects after a few minutes), basic math (multiplication and adding), drawing shapes, repeating sentences and making logical decisions.
Step 3
Get a CT scan, MRI or PET scan. These are all techniques that can be used to image and examine the brain. As Alzheimer's disease progresses, it can lead to changes in the brain that can be detected using these techniques.
Step 4
Get blood and cerebrospinal fluid tests. Often, before making a definitive diagnosis of Alzheimer's, your medical provider will want to do some simple blood and cerebrospinal fluid tests (from a spinal tap) to rule out other potential (and often curable) causes of dementia. These tests may also be able to identify elevated levels of certain proteins that are linked with Alzheimer's disease.
