I see a lot of ill people, perhaps not a surprise for a doctor, but probably the illness that I think is the hardest to treat is dementia.

Dementia rates are rising in our population, and it is a disease that, as a society, we are going to have to get a lot better at managing.

I will return to the subject of dementia again, as it is an area that I feel is very important that we talk about. However, this week I would like to focus solely on the question of the value of early diagnosis of dementia.

The traditional medical view, with which – up to recently – I would have agreed, is that there isn’t a great deal of benefit to patients to diagnose dementia early.

A lot of people worry about their memory, we’ll all be familiar with the multiple trips up and down stairs to fetch house keys only to forget why we went there. Most of the time there won’t be anything wrong. Sometimes however there will be a more serious cause to this memory loss. The theory has been that since there wasn’t (and isn’t) much that could be done for early dementia, it is best not to cause concern by looking for problems.

More recently, there has been an argument for identifying people with dementia earlier. There are thought to be quite a lot of people who have early dementia but their doctors and support workers don’t know it. One view is that people are diagnosed later than they would be ideally.

The theory for earlier diagnosis is that there are medications that can be used for dementia, which can slow the progression of the disease. In practice there are only a minority who would benefit from these drugs, but it is worth finding that minority.

Another good argument for earlier diagnosis is that it means that carers and health professionals can put in place support services to help. They can also then plan for what to do if the memory gets worse.

The advantage of doing this early is that the patient can be involved in making these plans before their memory deteriorates.

I think it is a fine balance and often patients themselves are not keen on early diagnosis. However after seeing the benefit of recognising the disease and better planning, I am now more convinced of the newer approach.

The government is also keen to get us to identify more people with dementia. Patients who are in ‘at risk’ categories may find they are asked questions to screen for dementia at their GP surgery. (They are usually fairly standard questions so there is always the possibility of cheating. I’ll give you a tip, make sure you know who the prime minister is!).

I am sure the aim of screening is well intended, but we need to be careful that the drive to do this doesn’t turn into a tick box exercise.

In addition, it is vital to be aware of respecting a person’s preference whether or not to find out about these problems.

And finally, one for later discussion, we need to make sure we have decent services for those diagnosed with dementia so that it really is worthwhile to find them.