Diseases Related to Alzheimer’s Disease and Alzheimer’s Special Care Units (Scu): Mixed Results

Alzheimer’s disease is, nowadays, the most common dementia as it would be at the origin of seven to eight dementias on ten. But it is not the only one we met in nursing homes: gathered today under the term “Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders”, other pathologies-frontotemporal degeneration, dementia with Lewy bodies, vascular dementia for more frequent-with the same type of symptoms but having a mechanism and different events, affect many patients and require careful thought for their support. Dementia is usually accompanied by “Behavioral and Psychological Symptoms of Dementia (BPSD)”, which may have detrimental effects on residents not suffering from this condition and worsen in environments overstimulated by too crowded or noise. To support them, different units gradually emerge. Among them, the Alzheimer’s special care units, small units, separate and distinct from the rest of the nursing home, provide a distinctive architectural environment, a program and a special caregiver for residents with a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease or related disorders. The present article proposes a reflection as for the care of the behavior disorders bound to the related diseases of the Alzheimer’s disease in Alzheimer’s special care units. Four clinical situations will put forward the deadlock and the indecision which can arise in the support of these residents in nursing homes.