Physiotherapy is essential to maintain the physical and functional autonomy in each stage of Alzheimers.

Madrid, September of 2011. The vocal of the General Council of physiotherapists schools of Spain (CGCFE), Iban Arrien Celaya, on the occasion of the celebration of the World Alzheimer’s day, has stressed the importance of physical therapy to maintain a greater degree of physical and functional autonomy in each stage of Alzheimer’s disease, thus improving the quality of life of the patient and his family.

Alzheimer’s disease is an irreversible degenerative disease, which is the leading cause of dementia in Spain and affects 1% of the individuals under 65 years of age, with a higher prevalence in women.

Among other symptoms, the disease produces initial alterations in attention, memory, and temporal-spatial orientation. These symptoms are added to secondarily alterations in language, motor and the emotional disorders, as well as alterations of sleep, sexual function and appetite; delirious phenomena and hallucinatory; and neurological symptoms.

People affected by Alzheimer’s disease symptoms very variable even though the most frequent are driving deprogramming, limitations in learning, muscle stiffness, muscle weakness, respiratory problems and lack of collaboration, among others.

The great capacity of crippling disease, the need of changing and permanent care, the severity of complications, the change in structure and family dynamics are, among others, differentiating aspects that require coordinated, accessible and comprehensive responses by society as a whole.

As explained Arrien Celaya, as the disease progresses, the person concerned requires care by different healthcare specialists, including physiotherapists. To do so, the physical therapist specializing in neurology, which is in constant training, works integrated within a multidisciplinary therapeutic team consisting of professionals from different areas, offering comprehensive, individualized and specialized treatment.

Physiotherapy treatment must be revised and adapted regularly at every stage of the disease, as emphasised Arrien Celaya. Addition, it is important to achieve appropriate physiotherapeutic care physical therapist to establish health education programmes both to the person concerned as their family and caregivers, so that they better known disease, its risk factors, and patterns of physical and functional treatment to follow at home.

CGCFE

The General Council of physiotherapists schools of Spain (CGCFE) is the body that represents more than 40,000 physiotherapists, in Spain, dealing with the common goal of promoting the health of citizens. In addition, orders the profession, guardianship the interests of physiotherapy, as well as its optimal implementation and universalization.

Physiotherapists are health professionals, as foreseen in existing legislation, accredited with the University degree in physical therapy, taught at 43 universities and holders of knowledge and skills designed to benefit the health of the population. Furthermore, there is a greater number of doctorates and masters, to ensure their high qualification.