“The seven Clinical Stages of Alzheimer’s disease, also known as the Global Deterioration Scale (GDS), was developed by Dr. Barry Reisberg, Director of the Fisher Alzheimer’s Disease Education and Research program at NYU Grossman School of Medicine. This guideline is used by professionals and caregivers around the world to identify at what stage of the disease a person is in. Stages 1-3 are the pre-dementia stages; stages 4-7 are the dementia stages. Stage 5 is the point where a person can no longer live without assistance.
Everyone becomes forgetful from time to time: forgetting where you placed the car keys, not remembering to pick up an item at the grocery store, forgetting to return a friend’s phone call. And as we age, most of us become increasingly forgetful. At least half of those over age 65 say that they are more forgetful than they were when they were younger, experiencing “senior moments” about things like where they put things or recalling somebody’s name.
But when does an ordinary memory lapse indicate something more serious, like early Alzheimer’s disease or another form of dementia? Can you brush it off as “just being forgetful,” or might it be mild cognitive impairment, a more pronounced form of memory loss that sometimes precedes dementia?”
https://www.alzinfo.org/understand-alzheimers/clinical-stages-of-alzheimers/