Abstract

Elderly population are one of the most vulnerable and major age group of individuals in our population. The rising rate of cognitive diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, senile dementia and other psychiatric ailments among this age group is of great concern to the treating physician as well as, aburden in the society and the family of the individual. In this study we evaluated the prevalence of cognitive impairment among the elderly individuals in a tertiary care hospital in Puducherry to cumulate the bulk of patients that may be developing any form of cognitive dysfunctionamong the apparently mentally healthy elderly individuals. A Mini-Mental State Exam questionnaire was used to assess the individuals and score them into categories of cognitive health. We found that 19.3% of our patients had a cognitive dysfunction. This shows the bulk of silent cases of cognitive dysfunction ns that prevail among our elderly patients which warrants an expert evaluation and care in order to improve or support their lifestyle and hence reduce the burden of geriatric health problems in society. We also tried to correlate this impairment to their lifestyle and comorbidities but could not get a statistically significant result for the same, hence imparting the need for further larger scale studies.

Key Words: Cognitive dysfunction, Alzheimer’s disease, MMSE, Geriatric health.