[Dementia--where are we today?]

A review for the non-specialist. The proportion of dementia of different types varies in different investigations, illustrating the difficulty of classification. Recently genetic variants of amyloid precursor protein and apolipoprotein E have been found in some of the families with familial Alzheimer's disease. Cortical Lewy body disease and frontotemporal dementia have been described recently, indicating that Alzheimer's disease comprises more diseases. When diagnosing dementia, it is important to identify confusions, depressions, the vascular dementias and the potentially reversible ones. The treatment may include reducing drug therapy, prophylactic treatment of thromboembolic or hypertensive disease, care, information to the family and carers, and sometimes drug treatment for psychiatric symptoms. In the near future effective treatment of some of the primary degenerative dementias may become possible. It will then be necessary to make a more specified diagnosis at an early stage.