Dementia and immobility

Structured physical and psychiatric assessments were performed on 100 elderly women with dementia admitted to either a geriatric or a geriatric psychiatry unit, and the relationship between physical and mental factors and the ability to transfer was investigated. There was an association between limited mobility and physical and psychiatric evidence of cerebrovascular and cardiac disease; but none between mobility and most measures of degree of dementia, vision, hearing, balance, cerebellar function, position sense, ankle reflexes, postural hypotension, locomotor disease, medication or ratings for depression, anxiety, irritability, hostility, lack of co-operation, suspiciousness, or distractibility. This suggests that in dementia the main cause of limited mobility is focal neurological damage.