2004 - Paul Mathews, MD. Geriatric Psychiatrist specialized in treating Alzheimers Disease with extensive experience in treating AD with Namenda.
Nov 17 meeting: [2004]
Location Fish Tales Retaurant, Galveston Seawall
2502 Seawall Blvd. (at 25th street, across from the Flag Ship hotel) Galveston, Texas 77550 409 762 8545
The GCAPN meeting was held at Fishtales in Galveston and sponsored by Forest Pharmaceuticals with the speaker being a geriatric psych specialist - Dr. Paul Matthews from Louisiana.
He was a great speaker, stating he liked working with NP's and even teaches in the nursing program at McNeese University.
He was brought in to talk about Namenda being the drug of choice for dementia in Alzheimer's Disease.
He spoke about indications for Namenda off label - citing research that has been done in Europe and the US. Although only approved on the FDA fast track last year, it has been used for the past 20 years or so in Europe for other types of dementia, including vascular dementia. He also suggested off label use for diabetic peripheral neuropathy.
Pathophysiologically - it blocks glutamate which is the #1 excitatory neurotransmitter for memory and cognition.
In Alzheimer's dementia, there is a flood of glutamate that doesn't allow for normal sensory perception of thoughts, feelings and memories and ultimately results in cell death from overstimulation.
Namenda can be used for mild to severe dementia in conjunction with meds like Aricept
and you will see 40% of patients get better,
40% will improve symptoms
and 20% will have no results at all.
Dosing needs to be titrated over 30 days from 5mg BID to 10mg BID. Then you should begin to see improvement within 21 days of starting the maintainence dose of 10mg BID. Forest Pharm provides drug benefit to all patients no matter what income if providers will just fill out one page and fax back. Saves $100 a month!
As for the GCAPN meeting after the presentation, there was a poor turnout of members probably due to weather, end of semester blues, etc. Minutes for the October meeting were approved. Several items from the agenda at last meeting had to be tabled for discussion since there were not enough members and only two board members present. Nominations for NP of the year for GCAPN were solicited and need to be returned to webmaster before the end of the month so it can be announced in December. Meeting for December will be at Brunos per discussion among the members present. Rosie Morales reminded everyone to attend Legislative Day in Austin Feb 7th, 2005 and to attend the TNP conference in Houston in 2005. Paula gave treasurer report as $2000 in account, $100 was sent to CNAP for our contribution to continue lobbying on our behalf at the state level. One member reports the American Heart Association has published new pocket guidelines for treating women with heart disease on the AHA website - www.aha.org. Paula announced the FNP Association website has free CEU's. Meeting adjourned after raffle for door prize.
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