In your country, how do they diagnose Alzheimer?

It used to be that they could only accurately diagnose Alzheimers by an autopsy after death but now I believe they can do a PET scan of your brain and see the plaque and beta-amyloids that have built up. This would be done after many mental functioning tests have been done and the results analyzed.

That is my understanding but I am not an expert in the field at all. Just an elder with a history of dementia in the family.

@janbb is correct.

Patients are first sorted through simpler tests, such as verbal examination. Those are used to separate dementia from simple forgetfulness.
President Trump took such a test and did fine.

I know of at least 3 people that were started off with the simpler tests, as @Patty_Melt mentions, where they are asked to draw the face of a clock and put the numbers where they belong.

@chyna Oh yeah – I took one of those when I asked the doctor about it. It’s called a mini-mental test. And then there are more extensive ones which I didn’t need to take.

^ I hope you passed.

^^ With flying colors although not so sure about the 9 and the 3. :-)

In the UK the patients doctor normally gives the patient a short cognitive test using several cognitive questions such as giving the patient a name and fictitious address and then asks several other questions and finally returns to the name and address the doctor gave and asks the patient about them.

If the doctor consider more investigation is needed he/she will refer the patient to the hospital where they will normally give the patient a brain scan and often an MRI scan, Finally they will conduct a very lengthy cognitive exam. This exam normally last at least 2 hours.

The results of these test should confirm or refute the fact that the patient is or is not suffering from Alzheimer’s

Many years ago because of serious memory loss I was referred to the hospital but thank goodness I was told I did not have Alzheimer’s but was unfortunately suffering from bad memory problems. .

In Canada we have the Montreal Protocol. Donald Trump took it with his physical 4 years ago. He received a perfect 30/30 score. I took the test and got a 20’ish score and failed the test.

Person, woman, man,camera,TV The mini cognitive test seems to be where they start to determine if any further tests needs to be run.

According to the Alzheimer’s website… https://www.alz.org/alzheimers-dementia/diagnosis/medical_tests…there’s not much that can be done to know for sure. If you fail in too many areas, you are labeled as having it. There’s no specific test to determine or verify that’s it’s actually Alzheimer.