| |
Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
 | |
|
| Concordance with clinical practice guidelines for dementia in general practice | | Author(s) | Jane Wilcock, Steve Iliffe, Stephen Turner |
| Journal title | Aging & Mental Health, vol 13, no 2, March 2009 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis, March 2009 |
| Pages | pp 155-161 |
| Source | http://www.tandfonline.com |
| Keywords | Dementia ; Diagnosis ; General practice ; Standards of provision ; Clinical surveys ; London ; Scotland. |
| Annotation | Dementia is said to be under-recognised and sub-optimally managed in primary care, but there is little information about actual processes of diagnosis and clinical care. In an unblinded, cluster randomised pre-test post-test controlled trial involving 35 practices in London and Central Scotland, patients with a diagnosis of probable or confirmed dementia were identified. After seeking permission from these patients and/or their carers, the medical records of 450 patients aged 75+ were reviewed using a data extraction tool designed for the study and based on published guidelines. Unweighted scores for diagnostic concordance and management concordance were calculated. Only 4% of cases were first diagnosed in secondary care; two-thirds of those identified in primary care were referred immediately; about one-third identified had informant history and blood tests documented in the Index consultation and one-fifth underwent cognitive function testing. The records analysed in this study came from a period before the Quality Outcomes Framework and show that documentation in primary care of the diagnostic process in dementia syndrome is good, although there were significant gaps, particularly around depression case-finding. Information about management processes were less evident in the records. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-090616206 A |
| Classmark | EA: LK7: L5: 583: 3G: 82L: 9A |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
|
| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
| |
|