People with dementia but no diagnosis can have more problematic hospitalizations, Elizabeth Tracey reports
Update: 2025-09-08
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Older people with undiagnosed dementia who get hospitalized experience worse outcomes than other groups of older adults who require hospitalization, a study by Halima Amjad, a dementia and geriatrics expert at Johns Hopkins, and colleagues has shown.
Amjad: Focusing on undiagnosed dementia we unfortunately know is common. So studies that I've led and others have done have estimated that about half of people living with dementia in the United states are undiagnosed. Where it hasn't been picked up by their doctors, by the healthcare system and oftentimes not yet by families either. There's a lot of reasons why dementia goes undiagnosed for patients and families. Sometimes there's denial, we don't want to see the symptoms, but there's also a lot of just normalizing memory changes as someone gets older. :32
Amjad notes that getting a dementia diagnosis can be challenging as there are changes that do occur with aging or as a result of certain medications that seem to be the culprit. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.
Amjad: Focusing on undiagnosed dementia we unfortunately know is common. So studies that I've led and others have done have estimated that about half of people living with dementia in the United states are undiagnosed. Where it hasn't been picked up by their doctors, by the healthcare system and oftentimes not yet by families either. There's a lot of reasons why dementia goes undiagnosed for patients and families. Sometimes there's denial, we don't want to see the symptoms, but there's also a lot of just normalizing memory changes as someone gets older. :32
Amjad notes that getting a dementia diagnosis can be challenging as there are changes that do occur with aging or as a result of certain medications that seem to be the culprit. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.
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