Supported by the John A. Hartford Foundation, Study Shows Alzheimer’s Patients Have Lower Perception of Pain
People with Alzheimer’s disease don’t perceive pain as readily as healthy older adults, and this may lead to delays and underreporting of pain.
This alteration in pain detection may be one reason that people with Alzheimer’s disease and pain tend to be undermedicated and suffer unnecessarily, a trans-institutional group of Vanderbilt researchers reported recently in BMC Medicine.
It also puts them at increased risk for delay in detecting underlying conditions that could have a serious impact and potentially lead to tissue or organ damage, said the paper’s first author, Todd Monroe, Ph.D., R.N., an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University School of Nursing (VUSN)...