Dementia in 50 Years and Older Patients from the Psychiatry Out Patient Department of a Tertiary Care Center: A Descriptive Cross-sectional Study

INTRODUCTION: Dementia is a chronic and progressive syndrome due to disease of brain. Alzhemeir's disease is the most common cause of dementia. There are very few studies regarding prevalence of dementia in Nepal. The objective of this study is to find the prevalence of dementia in 50 years and older patients from the psychiatry out patient department of a tertiary care center. METHODS: A descriptive cross-sectional study was done in patients attending to psychiatry outpatient department over one year from May 2020 to April 2021. Ethical approval was taken from the Institutional Review Committee (Reference number: 745/077-078). The data were assessed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 20. Point estimate at 95% Confidence Interval was calculated along with frequency and proportion for binary data. RESULTS: Out of 1332 patients, 52 (3.9%) (95% Confidence Interval=2.86-4.93) patients had dementia in which 30 (57.7%) are male while 22 (42.3%) are female. Mean age of study population is 70.12±11.21 with age range of 50 years to 88 years. We found 29 (55.8%) moderate, 18 (34.6%) severe and 5 (9.6%) mild type of dementia. We had 34 (65.3%) Alzheimer's followed by 16 (30.8%) vascular and 2 (3.9%) others types of dementia. CONCLUSIONS: This study concludes that the prevalence of dementia in 50 years and older patients is similar in comparison to other studies done in similar settings.