Paper Sample on Patient Analysis

Introduction

This paper aims to discuss and analyze a patient with a certain disorder, starting by looking at the medical history of the patient and progressing to the physical examination. Diagnostic tests will also be done, and the medication for the treatment of the disease will also be proposed. For confidentiality, the patient will be referred to as Mr. X. Mr. X was suspected of having Alzheimer’s disease. The paper will start by defining and describing Alzheimer’s disease, provide the symptoms and risk factors of the disorder.

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Definition and Description of the Disease

Alzheimer’s disease is a progressive disorder that makes the cells of the brain to waste away and eventually die. This disease mainly causes dementia, which is a progressive decline of one's ability to think, a decline of social and behavioral skills, which interferes with the person's ability to function independently (Tiwari, Atluri, Kaushik, Yndart & Nair, 2019). One of the main early signs that one may have Alzheimer's disease is starting to forget the most recent events, such as conversations with someone. The disease continues to progress, and the person suffering from it develops severe memory loss and even losses the ability to perform normal daily tasks that he or she used to do.

Symptoms of Alzheimer’s Disease

The main symptom of Alzheimer’s disease is the impairment of the brain. Its early sign starts with the individual being unable to remember activities and events that had happened recently. As the disease continues to progress, memory loss worsens (Lanctôt, Amatniek, Ancoli-Israel, Arnold, Ballard, Cohen-Mansfield & Osorio, 2017). The person starts to develop other serious symptoms like being unable to remember completely and organize his or her thoughts. At first, the person may be aware that he or she is having problems with remembering, but as time passes, the inability to remember becomes evident to the family members as well as close friends.

Alzheimer’s disease changes the brain of the affected by destroying their memory. Although it is normal for a person to have brain lapses when associated with Alzheimer’s disease, memory impairment continues to persist and worsen, which affects the person's ability to perform usual duties at home or work. Some of the common symptoms that a person has Alzheimer’s disease are repeating statements and questions, forgetting conversations, getting lost in familiar places, frequently misplacing things, forgetting the names of friends and family members, and finally finding it difficult to find the right words for expressing thoughts, identify objects or participate in conversations (Lanctôt et al., 2017). When a person shows the above signs, it is confirmation that the individual is losing his or her memory.

As a result of memory loss, the person who has Alzheimer’s disease starts having thinking and reasoning problems. The person is unable to concentrate and think, especially on complicated concepts. The individual also becomes unable to multitask, and he or she is completely unable to pay bills, balance checkbooks, and generally is not able to manage any finances (Lanctôt et al., 2017). As the disease progresses, the person becomes completely unable to recognize and deal with numbers.

Another symptom of Alzheimer’s disease due to loss of memory is the inability of the person to make decisions and judgments. This is because a person's ability to make logical and reasonable judgments and decisions continue to decline with time (Lanctôt et al., 2017). For instance, a person may start wearing clothes that are inappropriate to the weather or even start making uncharacteristic social relations like mingling with people who were not close in the past. Also, due to poor judgment and decision-making, the person who has Alzheimer's disease becomes unable to respond to daily life challenges, such as not being able to cook on their own or even unable to drive as they used to before developing the disorder effectively.

The last common symptom of a person with Alzheimer's disease is the person's behavior and personality. The person who has Alzheimer’s disease undergoes brain changes that impact the individual's moods and behaviors. The moods and behavior problems may include mood swings, delusions, apathy, depression, distrust in other people, changes in sleeping habits, and aggressiveness and irritability (Lanctôt et al., 2017). Although many skills are affected by the destruction of memory, some skills such as telling tales, reading, listening to music, doing crafts, dancing, and drawing are preserved, but they are also affected later by the damaged parts of the brain.

Risk Factors of Alzheimer’s Disease

There are many risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease. Some of the risk factors include age, Down syndrome, family history and genetics, past head trauma, sex, poor sleeping patterns, and lifestyle and heart health (Silva, Loures, Alves, de Souza, Borges, & Carvalho, 2019). Age is the main risk factor of Alzheimer’s disease. Although Alzheimer’s disease is not part of a person's normal aging, it is more likely for a person to develop Alzheimer’s disease as they grow older. According to Silva et al. (2019), for people aged 65 to 74 years, two people have the Alzheimer’s disease in every one thousand people, eleven people diagnosed with the disease in every 1000 people of ages 75 to 84 and 37 people diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in every 1000 people aged 85 years and above. This research clearly showed that the older the person becomes, the higher the chances of developing the disorder. The study further indicated that out that at the age of 60, the prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease was 1% (Silva et al., 2019). As the age increased with five years, the prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease doubled to 30% to 50% of people aged 85 years and above (Silva et al., 2019).

Down syndrome is another risk factor in Alzheimer’s disease. Down syndrome is a condition that results when a person has an extra chromosome. According to research, many people with Down syndrome develop Alzheimer’s disease (Silva et al., 2019). This results from the person having Down syndrome having three copies of chromosome 21 and three copies of the protein that results in the creation of beta-amyloid. Studies have also indicated that in people with Down syndrome, Alzheimer’s disease occurs 10 to 20 years earlier than the people without Down syndrome (Silva et al., 2019). Family history and genetics also influence one's chances of developing Alzheimer’s disease. For instance, if one of the family members have had Alzheimer’s disease, there is an increased chance that another person within the family will develop the disorder. Sex is also another risk factor of Alzheimer’s disease. Although there is an insignificant difference in the risk of developing the disorder between males and females, more females have Alzheimer's than males, which means that women are more impacted by the disease than men. This may be down to the fact that there are more women than men aged 70 years and above. However, even with statistical longevity, the prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease seems more in women than in men. Therefore, it can be concluded that women are more affected by Alzheimer’s disease than men regardless of the number of those who are aged.

Other risk factors of Alzheimer’s disease are poor sleeping patterns, lifestyle and heart health, smoking, and past head trauma. Studies have shown that poor sleeping patterns, such as difficulty falling asleep or just staying awake for longer periods, increase the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. Lifestyle and heart health is also another risk factor of Alzheimer’s disease. According to Tiwari et al. (2019), the same risk factors associated with heart disease are also risk factors that may increase the risk of Alzheimer’s disease. Lifestyle and heart health include having obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, smoking, and lack of physical exercise. The last risk factor is past head trauma. Studies have shown that people who have had serious head trauma have a higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.

Dynamics of the Alzheimer’s Disease

Age is the main risk factor of Alzheimer’s disease. As a person becomes older, his or her brain weighs less and even occupies less space in the cranial area than young persons. Also, as a person grows older, other changes in the brain include enlargement of the ventricles, broadening cerebral sulci, and narrowing of the gyri. These brain changes usually take place in anyone aging. However, when a person has Alzheimer's disease, these brain changes usually accelerate, reducing both the weight and the brain's capacity (Tiwari et al., 2019). In aging people with Alzheimer’s disease, there is the loss of cortical neurons and the occurrence of marked atrophy of the cerebral cortex, and this results in the increased enlargement of cerebral fissures, sulci, and ventricles more than those people of the same age living without Alzheimer’s disease. Other parts of the brain that are particularly affected by Alzheimer’s disease include the hypothalamus, hippocampus, frontal lobe, substantia nigra, and superior temporal gyrus, which enhance one's ability to think as well as control the behaviors and personalities of a person (Tiwari et al., 2019).

There are also microscopic brain changes in persons with Alzheimer’s disease, such as granulovascular degeneration, neurofibrillary tangles, and neuritic plaques. Granulovascular degeneration is one of the main pathological hallmarks of granulovascular degeneration. It is usually defined as the numerous electronic granules in the cytoplasmic vacuole surrounded by a double-membrane (Tiwari et al., 2019). Neurofibrillary tangles are an abnormal accumulation of proteins known as tau that usually gathers inside the neurons. For people with Alzheimer's disease, the chemicals' abnormal accumulation makes the proteins (tau) detach from the microtubules and join other tau proteins. This makes them join and be entangled in the neurons. The last microscopic brain change is neuritic plaques. They are also referred to as senile plaques. They are formed when the toxic beta-amyloid is deposited in the brain cells leading to the generation of cleavage of the amyloid precursor protein (Tiwari et al., 2019). It is common in people who are aging, but research shows that it is more pronounced in people with Alzheimer's (Silva et al., 2019). The degenerating nerves of the senile plaques are located in the hypothalamus, an integral part of the limbic system that determines a person's memory.

Conclusion

Finally, pathophysiological brain cellular disruption that occurs in persons with Alzheimer’s disease is vascular degeneration. Vascular degeneration is a general term that describes the problems of judgment, reasoning, memory, and planning processes that one experiences as they become older (Tiwari et al., 2019). It is caused by damage to the brain cells that impairs the flow of blood to the brain. According to the study, vascular degeneration results in deterioration of the brain cells, and this leads to this leads to a partial loss of the nerve cells to perform their functions properly (Tiwari et al., 2019). In most cases, the pathologic changes that affect both brain and nerve cells contribute to the increased mortality rate associated with Alzheimer's.