Persons living with dementia experience changes in the brain's temporal lobe that affect their ability to process language. Even in the disease's early stages, caregivers may notice a decline in formal language (vocabulary, comprehension, and speech production), which all humans rely upon to communicate verbally.
Stage 7: Late-Stage Dementia
A person in this stage usually has no ability to speak or communicate and requires assistance with most activities, including walking.
Speech in the later stages of dementia
They may have no speech. They may repeat the same phrase or sound. Some people say a lot, but their words may not make sense. Although the person might not be able to communicate with words, they may still be able to show their needs and emotions in other ways.
As dementia progresses, brain cells are destroyed and patients experience a symptom called aphasia. Aphasia refers to the loss of the ability to speak and understand speech. Aphasia becomes worse as dementia progresses. It can become harder to recall the right words and process information and what others are saying.
In the final stage of the disease, dementia symptoms are severe. Individuals lose the ability to respond to their environment, to carry on a conversation and, eventually, to control movement. They may still say words or phrases, but communicating pain becomes difficult.
One of the most common causes of death for people with dementia is pneumonia caused by an infection. A person in the later stages of dementia may have symptoms that suggest that they are close to death, but can sometimes live with these symptoms for many months.
If the person's mental abilities or behaviour changes suddenly over a day or two, they may have developed a separate health problem. For example, a sudden deterioration or change may be a sign that an infection has led to delirium. Or it may suggest that someone has had a stroke.
Signs of the final stages of dementia include some of the following: Being unable to move around on one's own. Being unable to speak or make oneself understood. Eating problems such as difficulty swallowing.
If you have a relative with Alzheimer's disease, you've probably experienced multiple conversational loops. A topic comes up and is addressed. Within a few minutes, however, your relative is back around to the same topic. Stuck on repeat. Repeating the topic multiple times during the course of a conversation.
The Stage 1 patient may cry out or mumble regularly. Care for Stage 1 Alzheimer's patients must be kept elementary. Use large, firm yet gentle movements. Caregivers should speak in gentle, soothing tones of voice.
Symptoms of frontotemporal dementia
language problems – speaking slowly, struggling to make the right sounds when saying a word, getting words in the wrong order, or using words incorrectly.
Stage 4: Moderate cognitive decline
Short-term memory begins to be more affected, and the person may entirely forget recent events. A person with moderate cognitive decline cannot navigate to new places, and they have significant difficulty completing complex tasks such as managing finances.
The term "sundowning" refers to a state of confusion occurring in the late afternoon and lasting into the night. Sundowning can cause different behaviors, such as confusion, anxiety, aggression or ignoring directions. Sundowning can also lead to pacing or wandering.
People with dementia often rely on their routines as a source of comfort. A daily routine helps a person know what to expect. This means that a sudden disruption in routine may cause dementia symptoms to get worse. This is especially true if a person experiences stress.
Rapidly progressive dementias or RPDs are extremely rare, but can cause dementia to worsen over weeks and months. RPDs can be caused by complex medical conditions such as Autoimmune conditions, cancer, and neurodegenerative diseases – i.e diseases that damage the body's nervous systems.
The Mini-Cog test.
A third test, known as the Mini-Cog, takes 2 to 4 minutes to administer and involves asking patients to recall three words after drawing a picture of a clock. If a patient shows no difficulties recalling the words, it is inferred that he or she does not have dementia.
Introduction: The five-word test (5WT) is a serial verbal memory test with semantic cuing. It is proposed to rapidly evaluate memory of aging people and has previously shown its sensitivity and its specificity in identifying patients with AD.
Sleeping more and more is a common feature of later-stage dementia. As the disease progresses, the damage to a person's brain becomes more extensive and they gradually become weaker and frailer over time.
However, end-stage dementia may last from one to three years.
Stage seven is the final stage of the dementia progression. At this stage, most people will have no ability to speak or communicate. They will require assistance with most daily activities including walking, dressing, bathing, and toileting. This stage requires 24-hour care and assistance.
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) is the most common human form of a group of rare, fatal brain disorders known as prion diseases.
The person in the late stage of Alzheimer's will experience: Severe impairment in memory, processing new information and recognizing time and place, Losing capacity for recognizable speech and. The loss of the ability to eat, walk and use the toilet without assistance.