Analysis of medical reports of guardianship proceedings of people with dementia a sample from Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil

Abstract

BackgroundDementia syndromes are chronic health conditions that lead to significant cognitive decline and functional impairment, including acts of civil life. Concerning the latter, a guardianship petition maybe needed when patients or family are at risk.MethodsRetrospective cross‐sectional study of documentary research on 72 electronical guardianship proceedings involving adults with dementia. The study sample comprises reports from six out of twelve Family Courts within the Court of Justice of Minas Gerais, with twelve reports collected from each selected court. The results were analyzed using descriptive statistics, involving mean, standard deviation, median, minimum and maximum. For statistical analyzes the software SPSS Version 20.0 for Microsoft Windows was used. When comparing continuous variables, the non‐parametric Mann‐Whitney test and the Kruskal‐Wallis test were used. The study was approved by the ethics committee by Federal University of Minas Gerais.ResultsThe sample had median age of 82.5 years with high level of education by Brazilian standards with a median of 8 years, and mainly composed by elderly women (68,1%) and widows (41,7%). Notably, 76.4% of guardianship proceedings were petitioned by sons, with predominance of daughters appointed as guardians. Geriatrics and Family Physicians (54.1%) stood out as the specialties that issued the majority of the initial medical reports. Alzheimer’s Disease Dementia (ADD) (61.1%) was the most prevalent diagnosis with a predominance of women (67.3%) and older people with a mean of 84.9 years (SD 8,6). In second place, vascular dementia (VD) (15.3%) followed by unspecified etiology of dementia (12.5%). In the non‐Alzheimer dementia group, the median age was 79.5 years (p = 0.016). In relation to education, there was no statistically significant difference between the group of patients with Alzheimer’s disease and non‐Alzheimer’s disease (p = 0.547).ConclusionsThe present work identified that the majority of medical reports were related to ADD and VD and were made by geriatricians and family physicians. This points to the importance of these specialties regarding the protection and promotion of rights of people with these dementias.