Category Archives: LBD

“Risky drugs: Antipsychotics, dementia can be lethal combination”

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This article from the Pittsburgh (PA) Tribune-Review is about a gentleman with Lewy body dementia being given Haldol, an antipsychotic, at a hospital. He was agitated and the nurses wanted to calm him before a CT scan. Within ten minutes of receiving the injection, the gentleman experienced fever and seizures. He died several days later from neuroleptic malignant syndrome.

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

“‘[Antipsychotics] get used a lot in dementia despite the black box warning,’ said Dr. James Leverenz, director of the Cleveland Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health and chairman of the Lewy Body Dementia Association’s scientific advisory council. Few other drugs are effective in treating psychosis, Leverenz said. He said he reserves the drugs for patients suffering the most acute psychosis. For example, he might prescribe them if a patient is calling police to report hallucinated break-ins at his or her home, he said. Leverenz said he opposes using the drugs to treat agitation except in very severe cases.”

Here’s a link to the full article:


triblive.com/news/healthnow/11908611-74/dementia-drugs-shook

Health Now
Risky drugs: Antipsychotics, dementia can be lethal combination
by Wes Venteicher
Tribune-Review
Saturday, Feb. 11, 2017, 1:24 p.m.

Hopefully everyone in the Brain Support Network knows about the dangers of antipsychotics in those with dementia and in those with parkinsonism!

Robin

Facial Masking – Blog and Podcast Notes

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Facial Masking – Blog and Podcast Notes

“Facial masking” is a common symptom in both Parkinson’s Disease and the atypical parkinsonism disorders (LBD, PSP, MSA, CBD). It is a symptom where facial muscles are immobilized and the person is expressionless.

The face is one of the primary means by which we communicate with each other; there’s loads of nonverbal communication in the face.

According to the Davis Phinney Foundation (davisphinneyfoundation.org), facial masking negatively impacts:
1- how healthcare professionals evaluate a person with Parkinson’s levels of sociability, depression and cognition
2- impressions and judgment of others
3- the enjoyment of a care partner in a relationship

If a person is speaking with another individual with this symptom, the person may believe that the other individual is disinterested or bored. This is true even if the people are married or in the same family.

And clinicians may believe the individual is disinterested or bored! Occupational therapist Linda Tickle-Degnen describes the difficulty this way:

“If a neurologist, speech therapist, or occupational therapist gets the feeling that the person they’re working with is disinterested or depressed, then this relationship can be affected. [Practitioners sometimes] fail to talk to the person about their feelings because facial masking consistently causes a perception of depression, deception, hostility, and apathy in practitioners — even when they are experts.” (tuftsjournal.tufts.edu/2010/01_1/features/01/)

Here are some tips for care partners and practitioners from the Davis Phinney Foundation:

Here are four tips for Care Partners and Practitioners (from a graphic related to the article):

1. Ask Positive Questions. Positive questions have been shown to bring out more facial expression than negative questions. For example, ask your loved one about what went right today or what instances brought them joy.

2. Trust verbal communication. We rely on facial cues to interpret others’ emotions. When a person has facial masking, it is important to trust what the person says is true, even if the facial expression does not match the sentiment.

3. Inform others. Tell new friends about your loved one’s facial masking and provide some tips for engaging with someone who has facial masking.

4. Examine your bias. Women and Americans are usually expected to be more emotionally expressive, making facial masking have a greater effect on how they are perceived. What biases might you have when it comes to how you believe people should express themselves?

Finally, this brings us to Kelsey Phinney, daughter of Davis Phinney, with Parkinson’s. In a podcast for the Davis Phinney Foundation, Ms. Phinney interviewed occupational therapist Linda Tickle-Degnan about her researcher on the social effects of facial masking.

You can a blog post by Ms. Phinney here along with a link to the 26-minute podcast:


www.davisphinneyfoundation.org/blog/facial-masking/

Brain Support Network volunteer Denise Dagan listened to the podcast and took some notes. The notes are shared below along with the related blog post by Ms. Phinney.

Robin

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Denise’s Notes

“How Facial Masking Influences Perception and Relationships”
Davis Phinney Foundation Podcast
by Kelsey Phinney
January 9, 2017

Kelsey Phinney was five when her dad was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease (PD) and has been interested in learning more about the brain and ways to help people living with Parkinson’s ever since. Kelsey graduated from Middlebury College in May 2016 with a degree in neuroscience.

This is her first podcast for the Davis Phinney Foundation, and its pretty good work. She chose facial masking as the topic and explains why in the introduction below. She interviewed professor Linda Tickle-Degnen, from Tufts University, who’s done some research on the social effects of facial masking with some pretty interesting results.

In a well controlled study done with both Taiwanese and Americans, she found that no matter the level of training or years of experience a healthcare professional had, they all perceived people with facial masking as being more depressed, less sociable, and less cognitively capable.

– In Americans, who value sociability quite highly, participants viewed people with PD facial masking as being less sociable.

– In Taiwan, intelligence and social contribution are more highly valued and people with PD facial masking were more negatively viewed in those areas.

– In both cultures, women are expected to be more emotionally expressive, and were more negatively viewed in all categories assessed.

Dr. Tickle-Degnen’s team has not found a way to train healthcare professionals to overcome this bias. It it likely deeply rooted and has been evolutionarily beneficial. The question is, will this innate bias affect the care people with PD facial masking receive.

In another sample of older healthy adults tested in the same conditions as the healthcare professionals, the result was the same. And, further, people with PD facial masking were seen as being less desirable social partners. This is a huge barrier for those with PD, when it is known that social support is at least, if not more important than physical exercise to prevent motor decline, morbidity, and mortality in older adults, not just those with PD.

Finally, research with people who have PD facial masking and their care partners reveal that care partners tend to have less enjoyment in a relationship the more the partner is facially masked (on a continuum). The upshot is, the more facial masking you have, the less people want to hang out with you – even your care partner!

This is only part one of this interview. The second part will be about current research and tactics people use in personal relationships and social settings to help people with facial masking better communicate, especially with their partner, and ways the partner can better understand what’s going on with their loved one.

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www.davisphinneyfoundation.org/blog/facial-masking/

How Facial Masking Influences Perception and Relationships
The Davis Phinney Foundation
By Kelsey Phinney
January 9, 2017

Earlier this fall, my parents came to visit me in Sun Valley, Idaho. During their visit, we had some of my new friends over for dinner. These friends had never met my parents, and they also had never met a person living with Parkinson’s.

Thanks to my recent work with the Davis Phinney Foundation, I’ve come to understand that it is important to be able to talk about the different sides of Parkinson’s with those close to you. With this in mind, I realized that the main thing I needed to tell my friends before dinner was that one of the more notable symptoms of my dad’s Parkinson’s is facial masking.

My dad has an amazing smile, makes goofy faces and gets that sparkle in his eye when he talks about something he’s passionate about. While those things haven’t disappeared with years of Parkinson’s, they unfortunately can be subdued. Particularly when he is tired, his face can appear to be “masked.”

THE EFFECTS OF FACIAL MASKING
My dad’s face, like many people with Parkinson’s who experience facial masking, is less expressive and more neutral than one would expect, given the content of his conversation.

Facial masking causes a loss of facial expressivity. The muscles of the face lose muscle tone, leading to a seemingly blank expression.

For people who don’t know facial masking, the blank expression can be misconstrued as a lack of interest, displeasure, low sociability or low cognition. We’re accustomed to a person’s face shifting and changing regularly with the conversation. With a masked face, there is often slowness and stillness in the muscles of the face.

The primary thing I notice is less blinking and less reaction, positive or negative. However, when someone with a masked face is passionate about a story or topic, you can often see the most genuine and beautiful smile!

Even though I know what facial masking looks like, having a conversation with a person with facial masking can feel confusing. We expect facial responses in conversation. A simple smile, nod, eyebrow raise or crinkle of the eyes makes the person who is talking feel heard. With facial masking, these small movements are not so simple.

It is easy to take for granted our ability to subtly communicate through our face and movements. It can be challenging to gauge how someone should react to our own facial expressions and stories. We may disregard someone with facial masking because their facial expressions, or lack thereof, go against our social expectations. Also, it can be difficult to trust verbal communication when the facial expression doesn’t match the sentiment.

From my dad’s point of view, I imagine it is incredibly frustrating to not be able to effortlessly express himself.

LISTEN TO KELSEY’S PODCAST
I wanted to know more about the implications of facial masking and the importance of facial expressions in social interactions, so that we can all better understand how to respond. I interviewed Professor Linda Tickle-Degnen, Director of the Health Quality of Life Lab at Tufts University. Listen to my podcast to hear about her research on the effects of facial masking, what it is and how it impacts how people are perceived by healthcare professionals as well as their own care partners.

LOOK FOR THE SECOND PODCAST – COMING SOON!
Dr. Tickle-Degnen had a lot of interesting information to share, so Part Two of my interview will focus on her current research along with ideas and tactics for people who experience facial masking.

“Delirium Makes its Own Mark on Cognitive Decline” (Alzforum)

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“Delirium Makes its Own Mark on Cognitive Decline” (Alzforum)

A comprehensive study of delirium and neurodegeneration was published last month in the journal JAMA Psychiatry.  The researchers wanted to learn “whether delirium worsens neurodegenerative pathology that’s already in the brain, or causes decline through a separate process, or both.”  Note that researchers relied on donated brains of those who suffered from neurological disorders — some of whom also had suffered delirium.  (If you are interested in brain donation, Brain Support Network can help your family make those arrangements!)

An Alzforum (alzforum.org) article about this research makes several key points about how delirium can hasten neurodegeneration and how delirium should be prevented:

* “[Delirium] contributes to cognitive decline independently of Aβ, tau, Lewy bodies, or vascular disease. But combined with any of these pathologies, delirium can quadruple the rate of memory loss.”

* “Delirium hastens cognitive decline in patients who have Alzheimer’s disease and increases the risk for dementia in older people who become delirious after surgery.”

* The findings suggest “delirium and pathology interacted to accelerate decline even further.”

* The “findings are a call to take delirium more seriously.”

* A clinician not involved in the study “said this study had tremendous health implications. ‘This creates an amazing impetus for public health agents to focus on delirium prevention as a way to reduce the negative burden on brain health.’ Almost half of cases are preventable by simple, inexpensive methods, ensuring people get optimal sleep, pain medication, fluids, and exercise in the hospital, he said (Hshieh et al., 2015).”

Here’s a link to the Alzforum article:

www.alzforum.org/news/research-news/delirium-makes-its-own-mark-cognitive-decline

Delirium Makes its Own Mark on Cognitive Decline
Alzforum
03 Feb 2017

Robin

Compassionate communication and managing difficult behaviors

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Brain Support Network had an exhibitor table at the December 2016 Alzheimer’s Association “Circle of Care” conference in Foster City.  Steven Russell staffed our exhibitor table, where he talked to people about brain donation and our local support group for those with non-AD dementias.  He also had the opportunity to attend a few of the break-out sessions.  Copied below are his notes from the break-out session on “Managing difficult behaviors.”

During the break-out session, a handout on “Compassionate Communication” was reviewed.  The handout offers “do’s” and “don’ts” of communicating with someone with memory impairment.  You can find my previous post from 2008 about this terrific handout:

www.brainsupportnetwork.org/compassionate-communication-dos-and-donts/

Two key lines from the “Compassionate Communication” handout are:

“You can’t control memory loss, only your reaction to it.   Compassionate communication will significantly heighten quality of life.”

Words to live by as caregivers!

Robin

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Steven’s Notes

Managing Difficult Behaviors
Session led by:  Alexandra Morris, Alzheimer’s Association
Circle of Care Conference, December 2016

Ms. Morris spent a good deal of time describing some typical dementia behaviors, why they occur and how to change or redirect these behaviors.

Ms. Morris reminded all of us that dementia behaviors are not deliberate. The care recipient has a disease and is exerting all of his or her energy to do the best they can with their disease.  Expending so much effort when trying to communicate and have the care recipient’s needs met can lead to “sundowning” at the end of the day.

Additional dementia behaviors can include repetitive questions, hiding/hoarding objects, delusions and hallucinations, suspicion, wandering and hitting. Besides exhaustion what leads to these behaviors? Here are some ideas.

The care recipient is a person who

– is an adult and doesn’t like being disrespected or under someone’s control

– is trying to get his or her needs met

– needs connection and purpose

– lacks insight into his or her condition

– is doing the best he or she can to deal with the cognitive challenges being experienced

– is  suffering from delusions or anxiety

– is irritated at something the caregiver said or did.

Ms. Morris gave us several tips to dealing with behaviors:

– Kindness versus Truth – “white lies” are better than anger, hurt or causing fear

– Appeal to the care recipient’s motivation (this may require practice to carry off successfully)

– Always say “yes” to a request.  If the outcome could endanger the care recipient, redirect to something safer as soon as possible.

– Don’t try to reason with or over-explain something to the care recipient

– If communication gets stuck, stop. Try physical movement to get unstuck (touch, gently direct the person towards where thy need to go).

– Tell a story – “I wondered about that…” “I’ll have to look into that…”

Probably one of the most difficult challenges happens when the care partner knows that a topic will agitate the person. Here are some tips:

– Determine if the conversation must be raised at all

– Interject with ” I have a question…”

– Change location

– Appeal to the person’s emotions, not the topic itself

– Use humor to defuse a charged situation

– Tell a “therapeutic fib” that helps move the conversation along without frightening the care recipient.

Every behavior has a purpose. You may have to put on your detective hat to determine what the purpose is.

– Let the issue go (“So what?”)

– Alter the situation to make it acceptable

– Keep responses and behavior slow, simple and calming

– Re-frame the issue/redirect to a more comfortable place

– Beg forgiveness rather than ask permission

Ms. Morris reminded the audience that as a care partner you can’t control memory loss, only your reaction to it. Remember that the care recipient’s disability is memory loss. Testing memory, lecturing the care recipient on their inability to find words or express appropriate emotions leads to suffering for all involved.  Instead refer only to the future (when the person with dementia mentions they want food, instead of saying “You ate an hour ago” say ” Why don’t I fix something for you in a bit?”).  Don’t use open-ended questions or try to initiate multi-step processes. Give the care recipient a simple choice between two items or direct their choice -“you look great in the green shirt.”

Finally, Ms Morris mentioned that the goal is to make life more calm and enjoyable for both you as care partner and for the care recipient. As you reassure the person remember that the care recipient cannot remember this reassurance. You’ll need to remind him or her each time.

“Medicare’s Coverage of Therapy Services Again Is In Center of Court Dispute” (KHN)

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“Medicare’s Coverage of Therapy Services Again Is In Center of Court Dispute” (KHN)

Incredibly, Medicare officials and consumer advocates are back in court again over the denial of therapy services (PT, OT, ST) to Medicare patients.

Here are some highlights from yesterday’s Kaiser Health News article:

* “Four years after Medicare officials agreed in a landmark court settlement that seniors cannot be denied coverage for physical therapy and other skilled care simply because their condition is not improving, patients are still being turned away. … The settlement affects care provided by a trained professional in a patient’s home, nursing home or the provider’s private office that is medically necessary to maintain the patient’s condition and prevent deterioration.”

* “Several organizations report that the government’s initial education campaign following the settlement has failed.”

* “‘We still regularly get calls from people who are told they are being denied coverage,’ said Peter Schmidt at the National Parkinson Foundation, based in Miami. Denials sometimes occur because physical therapy providers use a billing code that still requires the patient to show improvement. Although Parkinson’s is a degenerative brain disease, Schmidt said physical therapy and exercise can help slow its progress.

* “‘There was a long-standing kind of mythical policy that Medicare contractors put into place that said Medicare only pays for services if the patient could progress,’ said Roshunda Drummond-Dye, director of regulatory affairs for the American Physical Therapy Association. ‘It takes extensive effort to erase that.'”

Here’s a link to the full article:

khn.org/news/medicares-coverage-of-therapy-services-again-is-in-center-of-court-dispute/

Medicare’s Coverage Of Therapy Services Again Is In Center Of Court Dispute
Kaiser Health News
By Susan Jaffe
January 30, 2017

Robin