Prevalence of Dementia among Population Age Over 45 Years in Chiang Mai, Thailand
Suparus Wangtongkum MD*, Phongsakorn Sucharitkul MSW (Clinical)*, Nutcharut Silprasert Dip in Nurse*, Rudeethawinl Inthrachak Dip in Nurse*
Affiliation : * Chiang Mai Neurological Hospital, Muang, Chiang Mai
Objective : To determine the prevalence of dementia in Thai people with age 45 years and above.
Material and Method: This project used a cross sectional research design to study the prevalence of dementia
in Chiang Mai. Door-to-door technique was assigned in condition with multi-stage probability random
sampling to obtain subjects representing the population of Chiang Mai between Oct 2004 and Sep 2005. The
researchers collected the data from the subjects aged 45 years and above. All subjects were located from every
Amphurs of Chiang Mai. They were first screened with Thai Mini Mental State Examination (TMSE) and Thai
Beck Depression Inventory (BDI). The subjects whose TMSE was less than 24 were assessed and diagnosed by
a neurologist. Subjects who were determined as having dementia might be laboratory analyzed and classified
based on DSM-IV and NINDS-AIREN criteria.
Results : The authors enrolled 2,311 people and screened them with Batteries test. One thousand four hundred
ninety two people qualified with 610 males and 882 females, whose mean age was 59.7 + 10.4 years. The
authors found that among the 35 people with dementia, the mean age was 67.9 + 8.9 years (45-88 years). The
prevalence of dementia among the study participants was 2.35%. In the present study, Alzheimer’s disease was
the most common type of dementia diagnosed (75.0%) and vascular dementia was the second most commonly
diagnosed (12.5%).
Conclusion : The prevalence of dementia in Chiang Mai was 2.35%, which does not differ from the previous
study. Alzheimer’s disease was the most common type of dementia diagnosed.
Keywords : Prevalence, Dementia, Vascular dementia, Alzheimer’s disease
