Characteristics of Patients with Dementia Attended in a Tertiary Outpatient Clinic in Eastern Region, Saudi Arabia

Copyright: © 2014, Mostafa Amr et al., This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Background: Increasing longevity and a growing older population is associated with a higher prevalence of dementia. However; research on dementia in the Gulf region is relatively scanty compared to the western world. Objects: This is a cross sectional study to evaluate the clinical and demographic profile among 53 patients with dementia seen at the outpatient clinics of a tertiary care hospital (King Fahd Hospital), in Saudi Arabia between June 2007 and May 2011. Method: Evaluation of patients consisted of medical history, cognitive testing, assessment of functional status (Activities of Daily Living Scale- ADL; Instrumental Activities Daily Living- IADL) and application of the Neuropsychiatry Inventory (NPI) for behavioral symptoms. Severity of dementia was evaluated based on the Clinical Dementia Rating Scale (CDR). Results: Of the whole sample, 73.6 % were males. Age was 71 ± 5.8 years (mean ± SD). The types of dementia were: Alzheimer's disease (56.6%), vascular dementia (24.5%), mixed cases of Alzheimer and vascular dementia (18.9%). At least one neuropsychiatric symptom was diagnosed in 98.1 % of the sample. There were significan