Predictors of Progression From Mild Cognitive Impairment to Alzheimer's Disease

People joke about Alzheimer's disease being "old timer's" disease due to the natural decline in short-term memory as a person ages. Alzheimer's, however, is a serious disease, and it is important to be able to discern it from typical mild cognitive impairment.

Decision Making

• It is expected that an elderly person, or those of any age, will make a bad decision occasionally. Those suffering from Alzheimer's, on the other hand, show poor judgment and decision-making skills frequently, and they may also stop tending to their personal hygiene.

Daily Tasks

• An individual with typical age-related cognitive impairment might occasionally miss a monthly payment, while someone with Alzheimer's will be unable to manage her personal finances at all. She may also have difficulty following a recipe or working with numbers. Tasks will take much longer than they did previously or will become completely unmanageable.

Memory Loss

• It's normal to forget someone's name or what day it is, then remember it later on. A sign of Alzheimer's is memory loss that interrupts daily life, such as forgetting important dates or what season it is, particularly when that information is not recalled later. This also includes forgetting how to do things previously learned, such as driving to a familiar location or operating an electronic device.

Conversation

• If an individual is able to engage in a conversation, then forgetting a word is perfectly normal. But when he has great difficulty having a conversation or communicating through writing, there should be cause for concern. An individual suffering from Alzheimer's may make up names for words he can't remember, such as calling a pen a "writing stick."

Misplacing Items

• Mild cognitive impairment in an elderly person can cause her to misplace things on occasion, but an individual afflicted with Alzheimer's will lose an item and be incapable of retracing her steps to find it.