Publications by authors named "Carlo A Biagini"
Dementia Day Care Centres (DDCCs) are defined as services providing care and rehabilitation to people with dementia associated with behavioural and psychological symptoms (BPSD) in a semi-residential setting. According to available evidence, DDCCs may decrease BPSD, depressive symptoms and caregiver burden. The present position paper reports a consensus of Italian experts of different disciplines regarding DDCCs and includes recommendations about architectural features, requirements of personnel, psychosocial interventions, management of psychoactive drug treatment, prevention and care of geriatric syndromes, and support to family caregivers.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: The identification of dementia cases through routinely collected health data represents an easily accessible and inexpensive method to estimate the prevalence of dementia. In Italy, a project aimed at the validation of an algorithm was conducted.
Methods: The project included cases (patients with dementia or mild cognitive impairment [MCI]) recruited in centers for cognitive disorders and dementias and controls recruited in outpatient units of geriatrics and neurology.
Importance: The prognostic role of high blood pressure and the aggressiveness of blood pressure lowering in dementia are not well characterized.
Objective: To assess whether office blood pressure, ambulatory blood pressure monitoring, or the use of antihypertensive drugs (AHDs) predict the progression of cognitive decline in patients with overt dementia and mild cognitive impairment (MCI).
Design, Setting, And Participants: Cohort study between June 1, 2009, and December 31, 2012, with a median 9-month follow-up of patients with dementia and MCI in 2 outpatient memory clinics.
Objective: Recent guidelines have widened clinical indications for out-of-office blood pressure measurement, including home blood pressure monitoring and ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (ABPM), suggesting the latter as recommended method in cognitively impaired patients. There is, however, a widespread belief that ABPM could be poorly tolerated in dementia, often leading to withdraw from its use in these patients.
Aim: To assess the actual tolerability of ABPM in a group of cognitively impaired elderly, affected by dementia or mild cognitive impairment (MCI).
Objective: To assess the effects of Day Care (DC) on older subjects with dementia and their caregivers.
Methods: Thirty patients with dementia, consecutively admitted to a DC, were compared with 30 patients, matched for age and cognitive function, who received usual home care (HC). Primary caregivers were compared as well.
Background: Although antidepressant drugs (ATD) are frequently prescribed to patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD), their effect on cognitive status has been only rarely assessed.
Methods: The impact of depressive symptoms and ATD on cognitive status was retrospectively assessed in 72 older AD outpatients with mild-to-moderate cognitive impairment, treated with cholinesterase inhibitors, over a 9-month follow-up.
Results: Compared to subjects without baseline depressive symptoms, those with symptoms who were continuously treated with ATD had less cognitive decline; those never treated, or not continuously treated despite baseline symptoms, had an intermediate trend.