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Article: Should primary care physicians provide dementia screening? The evidence for screening is weak.(Point/Counterpoint)
- Article from:
- Family Practice News
- Article date:
- March 1, 2008
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2008 International Medical News Group. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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At first glance, dementia screening appears likely to be beneficial. But advocates of population-based dementia screening fail to take into account medicine's prime directive: First, do no harm.
Screening would indeed identify more Alzheimer's patients earlier. But what then? A positive screen for any disease usually kicks off a chain of tests that eventually lead to an intervention and hope of a cure. For our Alzheimer's patients, however, current medications provide symptomatic improvement for a limited time, without changing the course of the disease. A positive screen could bring terrible disruption into the life of a person who may have only a barely ...