How quickly can dementia progress?
That is extremely variable. All forms of dementia can progress slowly or quickly. The rare form of dementia, such as Creutzfeldt disease, unfortunately, is very rapidly progressive. Alzheimer’s disease generally progresses relatively slowly, although that’s a generalisation. It sometimes can present quickly. Lewy body dementia, the type that you see with Parkinson’s, again, relatively slow progression. And often if you take a history and ask family, when did the person start to develop problems, the timeline can be pushed back even further. So it’s quite common for a person to have evidence of mild problems going back 10 years that only leads to diagnosis and then there can be quite a prolonged period in which the disease carries on.