‘I’m just winging it’: Faced with confusing data on the new Alzheimer’s drug, doctors scramble to advise their patients

Their phones are ringing off the hook and their email inboxes are filling up with questions without answers.

Doctors who care for patients diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease — or people worried that they might be — are feeling the brunt of last week’s decision by the Food and Drug Administration to grant conditional approval to the first new Alzheimer’s drug in 18 years. That approval is broad, making no distinction between the mild, moderate, and advanced stages of the memory-robbing disease and setting no requirements for its diagnosis.