THE EFFICIENCY OF COMPLEX PROGRAMS, SUPERVISED USING A COGNITIVE AND MOTOR METHOD IN ALZHEIMER DEMETIA PATIENTS

• Main Authors: ZIPPENFENING H., ALMĂJAN GUȚĂ B., GAIȚĂ D.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: ALTIUS ACADEMY Foundation - Faculty of Physical Education and Sports 2015-12-01
• Series: Sport şi Societate
• Subjects: Physical therapy; complementary therapies; quality of lif
• Online Access: http://www.sportsisocietate.ro/en/misc/doc/show/252

Dementia is one of the most feared and devastating disease for the old aged, because of the sufferings it creates. It is estimated that their prevalence will soon reach epidemic proportions due to the population aging.[1] The goal of this study is to demonstrate the benefits of the involvement of the patients with Alzheimer's in cognitive and physical exercise training sessions, associated with multidisciplinary and complementary therapies, because they help delaying social exclusion and slow down the degradation of cognitive functions and their functional status. Material and methods. The research was done over a period of 8 months, involving two groups of patients, total of 52, of both sexes, with ages between 62-89 years old. All participants are already diagnosed and they are following a pharmacological treatment, depending on the disease stage. Group 1 is made of the institutionalized patients, benefiting from cognitive and motor multidisciplinary activities in a day center, and group 2 are non-participating patients, only following the drug therapy. During the study, the subjects participated in physical and cognitive training sessions, 2-3 times per week, which were combined with other therapies. We established the degree of disability and dependency, of mobility, the level of relating and participation - all by using the WHODAS,[2] questionnaire, then we studied the cognitive level by using the MMSE, [3] method, and we also tested the motor ability. Results. It has been proven that a high level of physical activity associated with cognitive training and supervised activities determine interest and creativity, slowing down physical and mental degradation. The group 1 has shown highly significant results (p = 0.0001) for both instruments for evaluation applied (WHODAS 2, MMES 1). The confidence interval is 95% in both tests, t = 6.0551, dt = 5 for WHODAS. With MMSE, the standard deviation is 4.48 for group 1 compared to 2.47 for group 2. Significant differences also appear in WHODAS, where t = 4.1477, dt = 50 and standard deviation for group 1 is 26.66 against 21.25 in group 2. Conclusion. Following complex therapies, the patients have improved their cognitive function, attention and concentration, and due to physical training, it was observed an increase in mobility and motor skills.