Malaz Boustani, M.D., MPH, describes the major breakthroughs in brain care that remain underused because so many cases of dementia go unrecognized in the U.S.
Transcript:
The past five years or so, there’s been three breakthroughs in brain care. The first breakthrough is lifestyle changes that can prevent almost 50% of future cases of dementia. Second, there’s now two FDA-approved medications that can slow down Alzheimer’s disease. Third, there is right now a CMS-funded program that supports providing comprehensive dementia care for people living with dementia and their loved ones to keep them at home as long as possible. These three breakthroughs have not been leveraged for every American in the United States, because 50-90% of people with dementia — or what we call mild cognitive impairment — are not recognized by our system. And if you don’t know that your brain has a problem in a timely fashion, you are not going to be able to intervene and change the trajectory of your brain health in the future.
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