Survey on the current situation for early diagnosis of dementia and contributing factors in Japan.

BACKGROUND: Early diagnosis of dementia is important for both initiation of non-pharmacological activities to slow cognitive decline as well as the development of disease-modifying drugs; however, it appears there may be a tendency for formal diagnosis to be delayed. Since the current status of diagnosis in Japan is unclear, we conducted a survey with family caregivers of patients with dementia using questionnaires and interviews to investigate the factors regarding the dementia diagnosis process in Japan.

METHODS: We distributed questionnaires to family caregivers of people with dementia and conducted additional follow-up interviews with approximately half of them. We calculated odds ratios for the time to diagnosis using logistic regression analysis for each characteristic from the questionnaire data. We also created co-occurrence networks from the interview data in order to provide qualitative context to the questionnaire data.

RESULTS: We collected 68 questionnaires and conducted 32 interviews. The median time to diagnosis was 12 months, and logistic regression analysis showed a significant trend toward shorter time to diagnosis in the absence of other caregivers. In addition, there were significant differences in age, relationship with patients and the time from the first visit to the final diagnosis between groups with and without other caregivers.

CONCLUSIONS: The results of this study suggest that the presence or absence of other caregivers may affect caregivers' behaviour and the time taken to receive a diagnosis of dementia. These findings indicate it may be beneficial to predict inhibiting factors and change approaches based on caregivers' and patients' background to promote early diagnosis.