SAT / 21MARCH15 2.30PM - TALK ON PROBLEMS WITH BALANCING, WALKING AND FALLING - AN EARLY SIGN OF DEMENTIA

To all Caregivers,

We have invited Associate Professor Dr Tan Maw Pin from the Geriatric Medicine, University of Malaya to give a talk at our monthly caregivers sharing session on 21 March 2015.

TOPIC:  Problems with Balancing, Walking and Falling – An Early Sign of Dementia

Day / Date:  Saturday, 21 March 2015

Venue:   ADFM PJ Day-Care Centre, No. 6 Lorong 11/8E, Seksyen 11, 46200 Petaling Jaya    

Program: 

2.00pm    Registration

2.30pm    Talk on “Problems with Balancing, Walking and Falling - An Early Sign of Dementia”

3.30pm     Q&As & Sharing Session

4.30pm     Refreshments

5.00pm     End

Both falls and dementia are very common problems among older people. We know that one in three older persons aged 65 years or older fall every year, and one in five older persons aged 80 years and over suffer from dementia. Recently Professor Joe Verghese in the US published a paper suggesting that certain older individuals who present with falls develop dementia not long afterwards. Don’t worry, it does not mean that once you have fallen once, you will get dementia. What Professor Verghese was referring to is a minority of older people who present with falls as the first sign of their dementia. All doctors who have had some experience in managing older people with falls will tell you that this group of patients definitely exist. Majority of patients we see after a fall will fall because of visual problems, muscle weakness, medications, poor balance, bad choice of footwear or low blood pressure, or any combination of the above factors. In the group of individuals with dementia who first present with a fall, they would have been experiencing brain changes linked to dementia long before the fall, but it’s only after they fall that the family and doctors start seeing the deterioration in memory and other brain function. This has not been fully explained, but it’s likely that the individual and their family were able to adequately compensate for any mild memory problems until the fall then tips the balance, and problems start cascading. In this talk we will be talking in more detail about what causes falls, and how we recognise early dementia, and how we reassure ourselves that the fall is not the first sign of dementia.

The Speaker, Dr Tan Maw Pin graduated from Nottingham University in UK in 1998 and obtained her Membership to the Royal College of Physicians 3 years later while working as a senior house officer in Nottingham. She then obtained a National Training Number in Geriatric Medicine in the North-East of England. In Newcastle upon Tyne she submitted a postgraduate MD thesis on "Autonomic Profile and Cerebral Autoregulation in Neurally-mediated Syncope". After working as a Consultant at the falls and syncope service in Newcastle upon Tyne for 18 months, Dr Tan returned to Malaysia and is now an Associate Professor in geriatric medicine at the University of Malaya. She is committed to research in health issues affecting older Malaysians and is currently the principal investigator to the Malaysian Falls Assessment and Intervention Trial (MyFAIT), and Promoting Independence in our Seniors with Arthritis (PISA) study.

Registration:

·      Forward completed Registration Form to jenny@adfm.org.my or Fax to 03 – 7960 8482  

·      If email or SMS, provide complete details with name/s, mobile contact, indicate you are a caregiver or healthcare worker.

More details, please contact Jenny/Michael at 03-7931 5850. Kindly register early for our refreshment and logistic arrangement.