Cuidados Paliativos en ancianos con demencias

Abstract

Objectives: To offer updated information on the Dementia and their handling in the Palliative Cares, pointing out the palliative behavior of the illness in their different evolutionary stages. 

Development: Nowadays in the world, people of 60 and more years surpass 11,5% of the total of the humans, with a significant increase of the Advanced Chronic Illnesses, among them the Dementias that it is calculated that suffer it more than 35 million people, fundamentally old ones. The necessity to provide Palliative Cares to the patients with Dementia is a recognized reality by the professionals implied in the care of those, and it should be applied in all the levels of sanitary attention. Evolutionarily, the illness lapses for four phases: minor, moderate, severe and terminal, each one of them with its own clinical characteristics and where different palliative measures will be applied. 

Conclusions: The patients with Advanced Chronic Illnesses and in particular the Dementias have intense sufferings at the end of their lives, needing cares and careful attention that are offered by the Palliative Cares Programs, where the family, multidisciplinary teams and the whole society should be interrelated. All the people have right to a sanitary attendance with quality, scientific and human. Therefore, to receive an appropriate medical care at the end of the life is the most valuable in the human rights.