Cost-effective recognition and diagnosis of dementia.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) has the potential to become the most overwhelming public health concern of this century due to increasing life expectancy and growth in the aging population. As a result, primary care physicians and neurologists will be seeing a greater number of elderly patients in their practice and will subsequently be expected to both identify and initiate treatment in those individuals who may display signs of dementia and related neurologic conditions. There is good evidence that AD is underrecognized or undercoded in primary care settings. Underrecognition is an important problem in this population because early treatment and counseling have been shown to provide benefits to both patients and caregivers. As their patient population ages, physicians need to learn to recognize the early symptoms of AD and make a diagnosis in order to provide cost-effective therapies.