HOUSTON – Actor Bruce Willis has a new diagnosis and unfortunately, it’s not good.
You may remember he lost the ability to communicate after suffering from aphasia in the spring. Now, his family says he has a type of dementia that’s incurable.
Health reporter Haley Hernandez spoke with Dr. Petya Demireva, a clinical neuropsychologist at TIRR Memorial Hermann who works directly with patients with the same diagnosis.
Q: In Spring 2022, Bruce Willis was diagnosed with Aphasia, is this a progression of the disease or something different?
“Aphasia can be a symptom of this disorder. So, frontotemporal dementia is the diagnosis, and this is a group of neurodegenerative disorders that result in atrophy or shrinkage of specific portions of the brain, the frontal and temporal lobes.”
Q: With Aphasia, patients can regain their ability to communicate. Will Bruce Willis be able to do that with this new diagnosis?
“It is a progressive disease, and unfortunately, there is no cure. The hope is to preserve functioning for as long as possible, as well as to improve or sustain the quality of life throughout the disease process.”
Q: How is this different from other types of dementia?
“Oftentimes with Frontotemporal dementia, the age of onset is earlier than some other types of dementia. So, earlier than 65 years of age for the majority of cases.”
Q: What causes this?
“Minority of cases, so less than 50% of cases, there can be a familial or genetic component, and so, for those individuals, they have a family history of either different kinds of dementia or severe mental illness or progressive motor symptoms that might have been undiagnosed.”
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