Pick’s Disease
Description
Pick’s disease was first discovered in a man in 1892. This man had gone through the latter stages of his life with loss of speech and dementia. After his death his brain was autopsied and it was discovered that his brain had actually shrunk due to brain cells in a localized area of his brain dying. Nowadays pick’s disease is usually confused with Alzheimer’s disease and this can make diagnosis very tough for a doctor. This disease however only accounts for five percent of all dementia cases and so pick’s disease is not as well known as Alzheimer’s disease. The reason why people suffer from pick’s disease is because of brain tissue dying but this will only happen in certain parts of a patient’s brain. Also brain cells can become abnormal and they can also die in the certain area where the brain tissue is also dying. The prognosis for pick’s disease is not very good and anyone with this disease will usually be in their forty and seventies.
Symptoms
The symptoms for pick’s disease are usually the same through all sufferers but some will progress through the symptoms faster then others and they will eventually need 24 hour care to make sure that they do not experience any problems when they are asleep or awake during the day. There are a lot of symptoms for pick’s disease from speech problems to changes in eating habits. A patient that is in the early stages of pick’s disease will also experience a personality change and that might make them more aggressive or even rude and impatient. Their attention will also change as they will find it hard to maintain a conversation for a long period of time and they will become easily distracted. Not all of these symptoms have to be present before someone can become diagnosed with pick’s disease. Instead it can only take a few of these symptoms to pop up before anyone will notice a significant change. Some people may not even become worried by the change and they may think that it is natural for a person to start to be a bit forgetful when they are slightly older. But when these symptoms get worse it is then that they will be taken to the doctor for a diagnosis.
Treatment
There is no known medication to help people that suffer from Pick’s disease. No patients are even recommended to take medication before doctors fear that it can make the patient more aggressive. If the patient is having speech troubles then there is a speech therapist that can help them try to regain some of their speech. It is also common for a sufferer of pick’s disease to par take in a new hobby such as rug making, art or even music as this can be helpful to the patient. Doctors do not suggest trying to change the patient by trying to acknowledge the specific problems with the patient. Some symptoms will show up in one patient while another patient will suffer from other symptoms.
Prognosis
The prognosis for people with pick’s disease is usually very poor, the patient’s condition will usually deteriorate over time and the length of time that it takes for the patient to deteriorate can be anything from two years to ten years, so it is very common for sufferers of this disease to have it for a very long time and during this time it seems that the condition will get worse. It seems that this deterioration in the patient is inevitable because of the fact that there is no known cure for this disease.
Summary
Pick’s disease is a disease that can eventually cause death in a patient if they do receive an infection during the latter stages of the disease. Some people are starting to believe that genetics can play a part in a patient becoming a pick’s disease sufferer but there is no real evidence to back up this claim. The symptoms of pick’s disease are vast and so pick’s disease can be very hard for a doctor to diagnose. There are some cases where doctors have wrongly diagnosed pick’s disease with Alzheimer’s disease and this just goes to show the similarities that do occur with patients that have either pick’s disease or Alzheimer’s disease.
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