2010 AJN Book of the Year Award Winner in both Gerontologic Nursing and Hospice and Palliative Care

""This book...provides important information on best practices and appropriate ways to care for a person with Alzheimer's and advanced dementia. Drs. Martin and Sabbagh have assembled a team of experts to help craft recommendations that should ultimately become standards that all professional caregivers adopt.""-Michael Reagan
Son of former President Ronald Reagan
President, Reagan Legacy Foundation

This book testifies that caregivers can have a monumental impact on the lives of persons with advanced dementia. Through specialized programming and a renewed effort toward patient-centered care, caregivers can profoundly enrich the quality of life for these persons. Providing guidelines for health care professionals, caregivers, and family members, this book introduces palliative care programs and protocols for the treatment of people with advanced dementia.

The book is designed to guide professional caregivers in meeting the needs of patients and their families, providing insight into the philosophy, assessment, planning, implementation, and evaluation measures involved in interdisciplinary palliative care. The chapter authors offer guidelines and standards of care based on contributions from nurses, physical therapists, social workers, dietitions, psychologists, family caregivers and pastors. An exhibit at the end of every chapter clearly articulates the standards of care appropriate for all advanced dementia facilities and health care staff. This book helps caregivers:

• Enhance the physiological, psychological, social, and spiritual well-being of the patient and the patient's family
• Anticipate and meet the patient's basic human needs: hunger, thirst, body positioning, hygiene, continence, and management of any pain
• Ensure that the patient's surroundings are safe, comfortable, and homelike
• Address health care decisions that will support the patient's right to self-determination until the end of life

A statistics textbook that delivers essential data analysis techniques for Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative diseases. Alzheimer's disease is a devastating condition that presents overwhelming challenges to patients and caregivers. In the face of this relentless and as-yet incurable disease, mastery of statistical analysis is paramount for anyone who must assess complex data that could improve treatment options. This unique book presents up-to-date statistical techniques commonly used in the analysis of data on Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative diseases. With examples drawn from the real world that will make it accessible to disease researchers, practitioners, academics, and students alike, this volume * presents code for analyzing dementia data in statistical programs, including SAS, R, SPSS, and Stata * introduces statistical models for a range of data types, including continuous, categorical, and binary responses, as well as correlated data * draws on datasets from the National Alzheimer's Coordinating Center, a large relational database of standardized clinical and neuropathological research data * discusses advanced statistical methods, including hierarchical models, survival analysis, and multiple-membership * examines big data analytics and machine learning methods Easy to understand but sophisticated in its approach, Fundamental Statistical Methods for Analysis of Alzheimer's and Other Neurodegenerative Diseases will be a cornerstone for anyone looking for simplicity in understanding basic and advanced statistical data analysis topics. Allowing more people to aid in analyzing data-while promoting constructive dialogues with statisticians-this book will hopefully play an important part in unlocking the secrets of these confounding diseases.