The general clinical picture of this mental illness. Everything about lobar sclerosis: the causes of the pathology, the stage of its development and ways to stabilize the patient's condition. Pick's disease (limited pre-senile cerebral atrophy, lobar sclerosis) is an incurable disease in which the cerebral cortex is affected, which leads to dementia and death. From the moment the pathology begins to progress to its tragic end, it usually takes about six to ten years. The relatives and friends of the injured party should know all the features of this ailment in order to maximize the care of a member of their family.
Description and mechanism of development of Pick's disease
Voiced personality degradation usually occurs in adulthood (50-60 years). Under the influence of negative factors, there is a total destruction of thinking and perception of the surrounding world.
For the first time, the German psychiatrist Arnold Peak became interested in this phenomenon at the end of the 19th century, who described the general clinical picture of the disease. In the early stages of research on lobar disorder, most doctors considered it a type of senile dementia (senile dementia). However, in the future, experts realized their delusion and voiced Pick's disease as a separate age-related ailment.
The described deformation of thinking is rather rare, therefore psychiatrists cannot clearly predict its prevalence. However, research in this area suggests that lobar sclerosis is diagnosed much less frequently than Alzheimer's.
Both sounded pathologies have similar symptoms, but still differ in some parameters from each other. Their treatment also implies a slightly different approach to solving the problem, because atrophy in senile dementia has a large lesion area and is not localized exclusively in the frontal and temporal lobes. Another difference between Pick and Alzheimer's disease is the fact that with lobar sclerosis, in rare cases, blood vessels are affected and foci of inflammation are formed. Neurofibrils and senile plaques are also absent.
The sounded pathology has three periods of progression of neuronal death in humans. The stages of Pick's disease are usually characterized by doctors as follows:
- Phase one … Lack of motivation in actions is the main feature of human behavior in the initial form of pathological changes in consciousness. Once important for him, moral principles completely lose their value with a pronounced sexual promiscuity. The feeling of shame is so dulled that the patient can satisfy the natural needs of the patient even in a crowded place. At the same time, his jokes and statements become stereotyped, and his movements slow down.
- Second phase … During this period, people experience amnesia, and speech becomes more and more slurred. The injured party is no longer able to complete the proposed task. When asked to free the sausage from cellophane, she will throw out the meat product and begin to boil its wrapper.
- Third phase … The final stage is characterized by complete dementia, when a person's dementia is already pronounced. He is not able to take care of himself and can even pose a danger to the people around him, because sometimes he becomes the culprit of a fire or gas leak.
Causes of Pick's disease
The described ailment is still being comprehensively studied by specialists. Psychiatry considers Pick's disease from the point of view of analyzing the consequences of some negative factors that increase the risk of pathology:
- Hereditary predisposition … Statistics testify to the pattern that if signs of dementia in adulthood have already been observed in the family, then this is an alarming signal for the descendants of a sick person.
- Intoxication of the body … With prolonged contact with substances hazardous to human health, the death of nerve cells occurs. This is especially true of the negative impact on the body of heavy metals, poisons and alcohol.
- TBI … Such an injury can accelerate the death of neurons in the brain and eventually lead to irreversible consequences in the form of dementia.
- Narcosis … Some short-sighted persons consider such a procedure to be a harmless drug intervention in the human body. However, anesthesia in especially severe cases can provoke serious damage to the nervous system.
- Depressive psychosis … The sounded affective disorder leads not only to lethargy and apathy in a person, but is a favorable background for the occurrence of limited pre-senile brain atrophy.
The main symptoms of Pick's disease
The fixation of progressive changes in consciousness is often hampered by the fact that this pathology at the first stage of development often proceeds imperceptibly. Among the main symptoms of Pick's disease, experts identify the following:
- Lack of critical perception of the world and your place in it … The injured party begins to behave very strangely, explaining their own antics by the impossibility of completing this or that task. As the pathology progresses, dementia takes on a total character. With anosognosia, the patient flatly refuses to admit that he has any disorder of consciousness. It is for this reason that he rejects the proposed treatment regimen.
- Misunderstanding someone else's speech … Not only does the patient stop giving detailed answers, he cannot analyze the essence of appeals to him. His utterances are increasingly reminiscent of the speech of Ellochka the ogre from The Twelve Chairs with elements of perseveration (repetition of the same word or phrase not in the subject). The other extreme of such patients is the tendency to answer any question with a large-scale template story.
- Uncleanliness … Even if a person in the past was neat, then damage to the temporal or frontal parts of the brain usually leads to the fact that the once tidy person ceases to follow personal hygiene and brings his appearance to an ugly state.
- Lack of tact … Arrogance becomes the main behavior of a patient with a similar diagnosis. His inappropriate questions sometimes amaze people, because before that, their abuser always chose expressions in assessing the events taking place.
- Tendency to vagrancy … In Alzheimer's disease, deviant behavior is typical for people with an advanced form of pathology. If we are talking about the described ailment, then even at the very beginning of the formation of areas of brain damage, a person tries to leave his home in an unknown direction.
- Obesity … As muscle tone is lost, patients with lobar sclerosis experience rapid weight gain. This is not a necessary factor in Pick's disease, but still 70% of such people in the second stage of neuronal death suffer from obesity.
Attention! The voiced disease so changes the personality that a once cultured person with a large vocabulary in a short period of time is able to turn into an inadequate person who is not able to connect two words.
Diagnosis of Pick's disease
It is possible to identify this atrophy of the brain only after a comprehensive examination of the patient. Usually, the diagnosis of Pick's disease is carried out in stages (in the second stage of its progression) according to the following scheme:
- Patient conversation … For this, it is best to organize communication of a degrading person not only with a psychiatrist, but also with a neuropathologist. The sounded specialists, based on mutual conclusions, will be able to most accurately diagnose the injured party.
- Communication with loved ones of the patient … This stage of the examination is very important for the further planning of palliative care for a person with pre-senile cerebral atrophy. People who observe changes in the behavior of their relative on a daily basis are able to help the specialist to recreate a complete picture of the existing personality deformation in their family member.
- Electroencephalography … The activity of this kind of impulses cannot be analyzed without an EEG. It is usually prescribed for the detection of epilepsy, but it clearly shows significant deviations from the norm in Pick's disease.
- Tomography … Thanks to this diagnostic method, it is possible to determine the affected areas of the brain and then calculate how intensively the identified pathology progresses.
Correction of the behavior of a person with Pick's disease
You should immediately voice the fact that such a dangerous ailment literally in 5-6 years leads to the fact that the once adequate person simply turns into a “vegetable”. There is no cure for Pick's disease as such, but it is realistic to provide supportive therapy and decent care for the injured party from those close to him.
Psychological care for patients with lobar sclerosis
This kind of support gives tangible results when it comes to the first and second stages of the development of the disease. In this case, the following measures to correct the distorted consciousness in the patient will help:
- Cognitive trainings … Participation in them allows you to activate spatial orientation, which is so necessary for sounded atrophy of the brain. During such sessions, specialists suggest their patients to practice being aware of certain processes, work with the proposed information and try their hand at group interaction.
- Sensory room … Such an oasis of stress relief and relaxation helps the patient to completely relax and at least partially restore the disturbed harmony with the outside world. After personal communication with the patient, the specialist equips the sensory room with the necessary equipment in the form of special light panels, frameless furniture, audiovisual special effects, etc.
- Art therapy … For many pathologies that are associated with serious disorders of the central nervous system, the use of this technique helps. Even against the background of progressive dementia, a person who loved to draw before the illness may, on a subconscious level, continue to strive to pick up a pencil or brush. Under the guidance of an experienced specialist, it is possible to recreate some figurative associations in a person who slowly but surely begins to degrade.
- Presence simulation (PMT) … Sounded therapy implies improving the quality of life of those people who have already been diagnosed with developed dementia. This practice involves showing a family album or videos to people who have practically lost their own selves.
Drug therapy for Pick's disease
With lobar sclerosis, the prescribed drugs are able to stop the main symptoms of the disease, but they cannot cure it. Usually, in this case, the patient is prescribed the following course of supportive therapy:
- Nootropics (neuroprotective agents) … Phenylpiracetam and Piracetam are excellent psychostimulants with an obvious effect of the resumption of some human functions. Memantine is also a fairly common prescription for dementia because it has the ability to somewhat improve the patient's weakening memory.
- Antipsychotics … If the affected area includes the basal cortex of the brain and right hemispheric atrophy, Chlorprothixene and Alimemazine are prescribed to relieve excessive fussiness and aggressiveness.
- Antidepressants … With left-sided atrophy, the patient often has bouts of blues and apathy. To smooth out the sounded symptoms, it is necessary to take Paroxetine and Amitriptyline.
- Herbal preparations … In the absence of an allergic reaction to the main components of such medicines, Novo-Passit (blocking headaches and relieving anxiety) and Persen (sedative property) can be given to the affected side.
What is Pick's disease - watch the video:
After reading the materials of this article, one should take into account the fact that a person with such a diagnosis is not at all guilty of his inappropriate behavior. Remember the short life expectancy of such people and provide decent care in compliance with all the recommendations of specialists.
