Jordan Mast, MMS, PA-C - Lighting the Way to Patient-Centered Alzheimer’s Care: Employing Amyloid-Targeting Therapies Safely and Effectively Through Careful Patient Selection and Shared Decision-Making

All right, so the first kind of area that I want to discuss is I want to talk about why is it important to diagnose Alzheimer's disease earlier? I know this seems like a very obvious question, but you'd be very surprised at how novel a concept diagnosing Alzheimer's disease early is.

I know before the introduction of the MLA targeting therapies, And certainly the diagnostics that we have now, diagnosing Alzheimer's disease was a guess.

It was very much a, well, you have dementia.

This was where we really had to wait for patients to get dementia before we can make more of these claims.

And about 50% to 80% of dementia is Alzheimer's disease.

So we really had to wait until these patients had dementia.

And then we say, look, you probably have Alzheimer's disease and just leave it at that.

But the fact of the matter is now we have more diagnostic tests available to us, and we can start making these diagnoses earlier.

And it really validates these patients' concerns and complaints.

It helps the family members feel more validated in their concerns.

It empowers them.

It allows them to really have... kind of a step forward.

You'll actually be hearing from a patient a little bit later about this process.

But patients, when they finally get this diagnosis, can start to make some major changes in their life, if they're not already, lifestyle changes, dietary things, get more active in their communities, and potentially even make some changes with regards to legal things like POA, And so we're really getting excited about being able to help these patients at a much earlier stage in their journey.

Certainly a more practical aspect of diagnosing earlier is these patients need biomarker testing in order to get potentially onto amyloid targeting therapies.

And still the fact remains that these patients are vastly underdiagnosed.

In Medicare analysis, about 10% of patients actually that have MCI are actually diagnosed as MCI.

Now, not MCI due to Alzheimer's disease per se, but this is something that is becoming a real problem, but it's getting better.

And it's things like this because of AAPA and Peerview, pharmaceutical industry, they're all really emphasizing this desire and need for us to diagnose Alzheimer's diseases as early as possible.

We as PAs are at the forefront of seeing these patients, especially in primary care.

Vast majority of patients that are diagnosed with dementia are in primary care.

And many of those are APPs.

It's primary care providers that are developing these long-term relationships with their patients.

They're developing trust.

And it's easier to have conversations with your patients in regards to this.