Alzheimer's disease involves the progressive breakdown of brain function in the clinical picture of a dementia syndrome. In addition to marked memory loss, there are disorders of thinking, language functions, emotional life and logical reasoning. As the disease progresses, the patient becomes completely lost in the environment, unable to use speech. As a result, there are problems in communicating with the environment. The aim of this study was to create a profile of language impairment in the successive stages of Alzheimer's disease. The research tool was the author's anABC survey questionnaire. The questionnaire, called anABC, was designed to assess language and communication skills. The Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) scale was used to assess the level of cognitive impairment. The study was conducted with 32 patients with Alzheimer's disease and 32 of their carers. Patients in the first stage of the disease had the greatest difficulties in pragmatics, content and semantics - the meaning of individual words. The greatest difficulty for patients in the second stage of the disease was in understanding and interpreting utterances according to context, followed by content and meaning of individual words. Minor difficulties in syntax were also observed. In the third stage of the disease, pragmatics, content and semantics were equally and most difficult, syntactics was a slightly smaller barrier, while phonetic difficulties additionally appeared. The largest group of Alzheimer's patients were those with significant impairments in interpersonal communication. There is an urgent need to educate carers of people with Alzheimer's disease about ways to communicate.
https://journals.viamedica.pl/palliative_medicine_in_practice/article/view/28549