19/12/2011

Dr. Mercè Boada, head of Alzheimer group at Vall d'Hebron Research Institute (VHIR) and medical director of Fundació ACE, was invited on December 8th by the University of Pittsburgh Alzheimer Disease Research Center and Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic to lecture the Conference "Methodologies for diagnosis and treatment for patients with dementia in Barcelona - Description of a large cohort."The conference took place in Alzheimer's Disease Research Center (ADRC) at the University of Pittsburgh to a specialized audience of physicians, psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses, social workers, residents and fellows, as well as other health professionals.Dra. Boada explained that Alzheimer's disease affects people worldwide, and the prevalence is rising as the population ages. Much of the research about the disease is derived either from tertiary care centers, referral clinics or form population studies. The purpose of her presentation was to describe the characteristics of patients evaluated at a memory disorders clinic in Fundació ACE, Barcelona, from 1996 to the present. This sample is important because the patients were not excluded based on medical or psychiatric comorbidities, and they were referred either by their primary care physician, or by local neurologists.During her lecture Dr. Boada focused on the description of the largest cohort of dementia patients in Europe, the effects of dementia treatment in the transmition from MCI to AD during a 2-3 years follow-up period and the use of innovative techniques to treat dementia patients in the context of a diagnostic unit.