In 1976, neurologist Robert Katzmann suggested a link between "senile dementia" and Alzheimer's disease.[5] Katzmann suggested that much of the senile dementia occurring (by definition) after the age of 65, was pathologically identical with Alzheimer's disease occurring before age 65 and therefore should not be treated differently. He noted that the fact the "senile dementia" was not considered a disease, but rather part of aging, and this fact was keeping millions of aged patients with what otherwise was identical with Alzheimer's disease, from being diagnosed as having a disease process, rather than simply considered as aging normally.[6] Katzmann thus suggested that Alzheimer's disease, if taken to occur over age 65, is actually common, not rare, and was the 4th or 5th leading cause of death, even though rarely being reported on death certificates in 1976.
This suggestion opened the view that dementia is never normal, and must always be the result of a particular disease process, and is not part of the normal healthy aging process,per se. The ensuing debate led for a time to the proposed disease diagnosis of "senile dementia of the Alzheimer's type" (SDAT) in persons over the age of 65, with "Alzheimer's disease" diagnosed in persons younger than 65 who had the same pathology. Eventually, however, it was agreed that the age limit was artificial, and that Alzheimer's disease was the appropriate term for persons with the particular brain pathology seen in this disease, regardless of the age of the sufferer. A helpful finding was that although the incidence of Alzheimer's disease increased with age (from 5-10% of 75 year olds to as many as 40-50% of 90 year olds), there was no age at which all persons developed it, so it was not an inevitable consequence of aging, no matter how great an age a person attained.
[from wikipedia]
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