Comparing Data from a Computer Based Intervention Program for Patients with Alzheimer's Disease

摘要

Nowadays, dealing with Alzheimer's disease (AD) includes a combination of pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical treatment. But, current drugs do not, and potential future drugs might not, improve quality of life. Evidence suggests psychosocial interventions, like educational and arts programs, do in fact have such a benefit. Supportive and enriching information technology may be more important than biotechnology (Whitehouse, 2013). So nonpharmaceutical treatment including physical and mental exercising as well seem to perform better. There are many forms of mental exercising from simple crosswords puzzles to sophisticated video games that exercise different cognitive skills. Main object of this report is to present the results of a computerbased intervention program for people with AD that take place in two Day Care Centers of Greek Association of Alzheimer's Disease and Related Disorders in Thessaloniki, Greece. There is a significant amount of data that include patients, who have taken part in interventions programs since 2009. For the purpose of this study we included data for a period of one year only. These patients have been tested before and after each intervention program (pre-test and posttest). Our work was to compare these data to examine how the program performs and which cognitive skills seem to have better improvement. The results showed that patients' overall scores were preserved for this period of time and had a slightly improvement which is a promising result indicating that this intervention program has positive effects.