Cognitive impairment guideline

The Guidelines and Protocols Advisory Committee’s Cognitive Impairment: Recognition, Diagnosis and Management in Primary Care guideline is available to physicians across British Columbia at www.bcguidelines.ca/guideline_cognitive.html.

The guideline provides recommendations for adults who are 19 years or older within the primary care setting and focuses on Alzheimer disease, the most common form of dementia seen in primary care. The guideline encourages early recognition and assessment of dementia and supports the development of a care plan that includes identification of community resources for patients and caregivers.

Key recommendations
•    Do not screen asymptomatic population for cognitive impairment.
•    Dementia can be masked in a typically structured office visit; third-party observations can be important.
•    Imaging is of limited value.
•    Always involve the caregiver and plan on several visits to establish and inform patient/caregiver of diagnosis.
•    Introduce advance care planning early.
•    Polypharmacy and multimorbidity can both be causes and effects of cognitive impairment.
•    Drug treatment has limited value; first consider nonpharmacological management of the behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia.
•    Make early and regular use of adjunct services.

For the complete listing of GPAC guidelines please visit www.bcguidelines.ca.

. Cognitive impairment guideline. BCMJ, Vol. 57, No. 1, January, February, 2015, Page(s) 11 - News.



Above is the information needed to cite this article in your paper or presentation. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommends the following citation style, which is the now nearly universally accepted citation style for scientific papers:
Halpern SD, Ubel PA, Caplan AL, Marion DW, Palmer AM, Schiding JK, et al. Solid-organ transplantation in HIV-infected patients. N Engl J Med. 2002;347:284-7.

About the ICMJE and citation styles

The ICMJE is small group of editors of general medical journals who first met informally in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1978 to establish guidelines for the format of manuscripts submitted to their journals. The group became known as the Vancouver Group. Its requirements for manuscripts, including formats for bibliographic references developed by the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), were first published in 1979. The Vancouver Group expanded and evolved into the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), which meets annually. The ICMJE created the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals to help authors and editors create and distribute accurate, clear, easily accessible reports of biomedical studies.

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For more information on the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, visit www.icmje.org

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