Appraising the need for care in alzheimer’s disease

Background Increasing incidences of dementia necessitate the improvement of supportive measures for patients suffering from this disease and their proxies. Clinicians without psychiatric backgrounds and others involved in appraising the supportive needs of dementia patients, such as those who allocate nursing insurance, base their appraisals on the ability of patients to perform basic and instrumental activities of daily living (B-ADL, iADL). Our aim was to investigate whether a reduced ability of the patient to perform ADL is sufficient to adequately assess the supportive needs of family caregivers.