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Partners in FTD Care
Partners in FTD Care #31: It May Not Be Parkinson’s — A Look at Corticobasal Degeneration
Corticobasal degeneration (CBD) is a rare neurodegenerative disease that results in nerve cell loss, scarring, and shrinkage of the deeper layers in the brain’s frontal and parietal lobes. (Corticobasal syndrome, meanwhile, is its most common presentation based on the pathological…
Partners in FTD Care #30: When the Conversation Stops — Logopenic Variant Primary Progressive Aphasia
Primary progressive aphasia (PPA) is a neurodegenerative disease that affects the parts of the brain responsible for speech and language, resulting in the gradual loss of the ability to speak, read, write, or understand what others are saying. Researchers divide…
Partners in FTD Care #29: Life During a Pandemic — FTD Facility Care Amidst COVID-19
Across the U.S., long-term care facilities have emerged as hotspots for the spread of the novel coronavirus, significantly disrupting their usual routines. For people living with FTD who are in such facilities, measures taken to control the virus can be…
Partners in FTD Care #28: I’m Only Trying to Help — Approaches to Resistant Behavior in the Home
In FTD, resistant behaviors occur when the person diagnosed opposes the efforts of a caregiver to help them with activities of daily living. Such resistance is not intentional, as persons diagnosed often cannot control their behaviors. In this case study,…
Partners in FTD Care #27: Rethinking Palliative Care — A New Approach to Managing FTD
Palliative care is specialized medical care for people facing serious illnesses. It can be used at any point in the disease to promote quality of life for both people living with FTD and their care partners. After Mary S. was…
Partners in FTD Care #26: Only Part of the Answer — Medications and FTD
While there are currently no medications to slow or stop FTD’s progression, medications approved for other conditions can be used as part of an individualized care plan to address some of its symptoms. The case of Jane L. shows how…
Partners in FTD Care #25: Everything Is Just Fine — Anosognosia in Frontotemporal Degeneration
This AFTD publication focuses on anosognosia, a hallmark symptom of FTD — particularly behavioral variant FTD. Often referred to as “lack of insight,” anosognosia is the inability to recognize or perceive one’s illness and its associated limitations; people who present…
Partners in FTD Care #24: An Evolving Understanding of ALS with Frontotemporal Degeneration
This AFTD publication focuses on ALS with FTD, an especially complicated and challenging form of FTD. It tells the story of Cathy R., a woman in her 60s, who increasingly shows symptoms of both conditions; her husband Michael, however, is…
Partners in FTD Care #23: Understanding and Managing Apathy
This AFTD resource outlines various strategies for coping with apathy in FTD, including verbal cuing, tailoring activities to past interests, and planning structured activities. The issue also presents two views of apathy: one from a person diagnosed, and another from…
Partners in FTD Care #22: Challenges in Diagnosing FTD
This issue of Partners in FTD Care explains why FTD is so unusually difficult to diagnose. It describes the changes in behavior, language and movement that characterize FTD, and details how physicians, neurologists and other healthcare professionals can work with…