ABSTRACT

Throughout the world, elderly individuals are rapidly increasing & dementia has become the center of attention of healhcare specialists. This research aimed to explore dementia and physical illness as their correlation among the elderly patients.

Methods:This was an observational and Cross-sectional exploration led during the time frame from July 2018 to September 2019 in the Psychiatry department of SaidueTeaching Hospital, Swat, Pakistan. Despite some boundaries, this study delivers basic evidence about the medical conditions related to dementia in elderly patients in Pakistan. For this reason, 90 elderly patients aged 60 years appearing both in the inpatient and outpatient department meeting criteria either exclusion or inclusion were selected regardless of gender and age. The convenient sampling technique was applied for selection of individuals.

Results:Theresults of this analysis revealed that most of them (57.77%) had the co-morbid physical disorder. Hypertension is a common Co-morbid physical illness (19.2percent). Nine (10 percent) of the respondents were existing smokers & 16 (17.8 percent) had a smoking history of more than 5 years. In the analysis, 50% of the participants detected with dementia had high blood pressure (c2 = 3.8908, P = 0.049), 33% had co-morbid diabetes mellitus (c2 = 2.4387, P = 0.12013), 33% had a history of cerebrovascular accident (CVA) and 27.8% had a history of smoking.

Conclusion:This study gives preliminary data that can be used in future research on clinical aspectsrelatedto patients with dementia in Pakistan.

Key Words:Dementia, elderly patients, Co-morbid physical illness