Care Skills for the Patients with Dementia with Lewy Bodies

Abstract

Dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) is the second most common degenerative dementing illness characterized with cortical Lewy bodies. Since 1996, when Consortium on DLB international workshop published the diagnostic criteria for this disease, DLB is getting more acknowledged, however it has not been widely enough recognized by nurses in Japan yet. Because this disease has the distinctive clinical features, the care of the patients with DLB requires the specific care skills. We have admitted and cared about 60 patients with DLB and more than 750 patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) since 1993 in the Hyogo Institute for Aging Brain and Cognitive Disorders. We have found that DLB patients have much more possibilities to fall, to disturb the other patients, and to need more help in activities of daily living as compared to AD patients due to the cognitive fluctuation, visual hallucinations, delusions, parkinsonism, and visual impairments. Therefore, for the care of DLB patients, nurses are expected to recognize the characteristic clinical features of DLB. They are also expected to share the specific care skills to predict the problems caused by these clinical features and to decrease and manage these problems appropriately.