Developing treatment guidelines for Alzheimer's disease and other dementias

Escalating health care costs and evidence that there is widespread variation in medical practice have led to the formation of more than 1800 consensus conferences in the past 10 years. These conferences seek to review the evidence that existing treatments have demonstrable efficacy; to determine if evidence favors one form of therapy over another; to review the guidelines for implementation, continuation, and discontinuation of the therapy; and to identify currently used treatments for which no benefit can be documented. This is a review of the process used by the American Psychiatric Association Task Force on Developing Treatment Guidelines for Alzheimer's Disease and Other Dementias, still in process at the time of this presentation.