How Long Do People Live With Alzheimer’s

Evidence That Life Expectancy Calculators For Dementia Actually Work

It turns out that the length of time a person has before needing full-time care, before moving into a care community, and before dying can all be predicted somewhat accurately. This information, though not definitive, can help families get a general understanding of how to plan for the future and what to expect as the disease progresses.

In a study conducted at the department of neurology in Columbia University, groups of people with mild Alzheimers were followed for 10 years and assessed semiannually. Data from these assessments were plugged into a complicated algorithm. The people studied were tested for the following:

Mental status score Cognition and function Motor skills Psychology and behavior Basic demographic information

Other experiments have yielded similar results. A University of Kentucky study analyzed the records of more than 1,200 people with dementia and found that it was possible to accurately predict their life expectancy. Researchers looked at many variables including family history and medical problems like high blood pressure and heart disease, and ultimately realized it came down to three things:

age when the first symptoms appeared gender how impaired someone was when diagnosis was first made

Stage : Normal Outward Behavior

Alzheimerâs disease usually starts silently, with brain changes that begin years before anyone notices a problem. When your loved one is in this early phase, they won’t have any symptoms that you can spot. Only a PET scan, an imaging test that shows how the brain is working, can reveal whether they have Alzheimer’s.

As they move into the next six stages, your friend or relative with Alzheimer’s will see more and more changes in their thinking and reasoning.

Signs Of The Dying Process

As someones condition gets worse and they are within a few days or hours of dying, further changes are common. The person may:

• deteriorate more quickly than before
• lose consciousness
• develop an irregular breathing pattern
• have a chesty or rattly sound to their breathing
• have cold hands and feet.

These changes are part of the dying process when the person is often unaware of what is happening.

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Factors That Determine Longevity

One study of 438 patients in the U.K. found that the main factors that determine how long a person lives after being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease are age, gender, and level of disability. Here are the main research findings:

• Women lived an average of 4.6 years after diagnosis, and men lived 4.1 years.
• People diagnosed when under age 70 lived 10.7 years compared to 3.8 years for people over 90 when diagnosed.
• Patients who were frail at the time of diagnosis did not live as long, even after adjusting for age.
• Overall, the average survival time for someone in the study diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease or dementia was 4.5 years.

What Stage Of Dementia Does Sundowning Start

Sundowning is a distressing symptom that affects people with Alzheimers disease and other forms of dementia in their mid-to-late stages, and the symptoms tend to worsen as the disease progresses. People with dementia can become hyperactive, agitated, and confused, and these symptoms can last into the night, disrupting sleep.

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Do Treatments Add Time To Life Expectancy

Experts simply dont know whether treatments help a person live longer with Alzheimers disease. AD and other similar dementias progress no matter what. Treatments like medications and therapies have been conclusively shown to help manage symptoms, meaning they make it easier to live with the disease, but they do not reverse symptoms. The memory of a person with dementia who takes medications like cholinesterase inhibitors, for example, will be slightly better than the memory of someone who is not on medication. Quality of life therefore improves with treatment. This means better years with dementia, but probably not more years.

Age When Diagnosis Is Determined

The age at diagnosis, too, is important because an older individual may already be frail and vulnerable to additional life-shortening accidents, diseases, or infections. Life expectancy after a diagnosis of dementia decreases with increasing age for example, an average person diagnosed with Alzheimers disease between ages 70 and 79 can expect to survive seven more years, while diagnosis after age 90 is associated with an expected survival of only 2.8 additional years.

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What Is Known About Alzheimers Disease

Scientists do not yet fully understand what causes Alzheimers disease. There likely is not a single cause but rather several factors that can affect each person differently.

• Age is the best known risk factor for Alzheimers disease.
• Family historyresearchers believe that genetics may play a role in developing Alzheimers disease. However, genes do not equal destiny. A healthy lifestyle may help reduce your risk of developing Alzheimers disease. Two large, long term studies indicate that adequate physical activity, a nutritious diet, limited alcohol consumption, and not smoking may help people. To learn more about the study, you can listen to a short podcast.
• Changes in the brain can begin years before the first symptoms appear.
• Researchers are studying whether education, diet, and environment play a role in developing Alzheimers disease.
• There is growing scientific evidence that healthy behaviors, which have been shown to prevent cancer, diabetes, and heart disease, may also reduce risk for subjective cognitive decline. Heres 8 ways.

Signs And Symptoms Of Alzheimer’s Disease

Alzheimer’s disease is a progressive condition, which means the symptoms develop gradually over many years and eventually become more severe. It affects multiple brain functions.

The first sign of Alzheimer’s disease is usually minor memory problems.

For example, this could be forgetting about recent conversations or events, and forgetting the names of places and objects.

As the condition develops, memory problems become more severe and further symptoms can develop, such as:

• confusion, disorientation and getting lost in familiar places
• difficulty planning or making decisions
• problems with speech and language
• problems moving around without assistance or performing self-care tasks
• personality changes, such as becoming aggressive, demanding and suspicious of others
• hallucinations and delusions
• low mood or anxiety

Read more about the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease.

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Life Expectancy For Other Forms Of Dementia

Although Alzheimers disease is our focus here, a discussion of survival should consider other dementias as well. Survival after a diagnosis of Lewy body dementia is significantly shorter than survival after a diagnosis of Alzheimers disease. Survival lengths after a diagnosis of vascular dementia or frontotemporal dementia are intermediate. Compared to dementia, a diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment is associated with a smaller reduction in life expectancy, and in many cases does not lead to Alzheimers disease and dementia.

Life expectancy after a diagnosis of Alzheimers disease varies from person to person. In the case of Genevieves mother, a white woman of age 75 at the time of her diagnosis, I estimated her expected survival to be around 6.7 years. This ballpark figure might prove correct or not since it is an estimate based on a population rather than a certainty for this individual. Having a general idea of expected survival assisted Genevieves family in facing the most probable future, planning, and valuing the preciousness of each remaining day.

Dementia And Early Death

Across the globe, dementia rates are expected to double every 20 years for the foreseeable future, with an estimated 81 million cases by 2040.

It is clear from earlier studies that people with dementia have decreased survival compared with people without dementia. Even mild mental impairment linked to dementia is associated with an increase in death risk.

But the characteristics associated with mortality among patients with dementia have not been well understood.

There is general agreement that women with dementia tend to live slightly longer than men, but the impact of other characteristics, including education level, age at diagnosis, and marital status are less well known.

And many previous studies have been restricted to patients being treated for the disorder by a specialist or in a hospital setting, Brayne says.

“We wanted to see what is happening with the entire population, not just people who are treated for dementia,” she says.

Slightly over two-thirds of the people in the study who developed dementia were women, and the median age at dementia onset was 84 for women and 83 for men.

The median age at death was 90 for women and 87 for men. And average survival times varied from a high of 10.7 years for the youngest patients to a low of 3.8 years for the oldest .

As in other studies, dementia was associated with shorter survival, but the cognitive level among people with dementia did not appear to play a major role in death.

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Does The Type Of Dementia Affect Life Expectancy

The type of dementia a person has can also affect how long they live with dementia. These figures for the number of years a person may live after a diagnosis are just averages and some people live longer than this.

This information may be upsetting to read and think about but it is very important to remember that, with the right support, people with dementia can live well at all stages.

How Does Dementia Reduce Life Expectancy

Dementia reduces life expectancy in two ways.

First, some of the diseases that are closely linked to Alzheimers disease and vascular dementia, such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease can mean a lower life expectancy. For example, vascular dementia is closely linked to heart disease and stroke. A person with vascular dementia is at risk of dying at any stage of dementia, from one of these.

The other way that dementia reduces life expectancy is through the effects of severe disease.

These all make them much more likely to develop other medical problems that can lead to death, such as infections or cardiovascular problems .

This is why the later stage of dementia is often the shortest.

A person with dementia can also die at any stage from another condition not closely related to their dementia. Cancer and lung disease are common examples.

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Care In The Later Stages Of Dementia

There are medicines used in the early stages of dementia that manage some of the behavioural symptoms. In the later stages some of these medicines can do more harm than good causing severe side effects that can increase confusion and frailty. It also becomes harder to diagnose and manage some of the normal illnesses that older people get such as Urinary Tract Infections . UTIs can exaggerate some symptoms of dementia and increase confusion sometimes know as delirium.

Pain is also something that can be present in the later stages of dementia, but can be harder to diagnose if the person isnt able to communicate it. For all of these reasons, its important to stay vigilant when looking after someone with dementia, and to talk to the GP if you are worried about anything.

There are dementia living aids and products that can help you to care for someone living with dementia. Something like a simple dementia clock or personal alarm can make the world of difference to your life and the live of the person you care for.

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Time From Diagnosis To Institutionalization And Death In People With Dementia

Amsterdam UMC, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Department of General Practice and Elderly Care Medicine, Amsterdam Public Health research institute, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Correspondence

Karlijn J. Joling, Amsterdam UMC, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Department of General Practice and Elderly Care Medicine, Amsterdam Public Health research institute, Van der Boechorststraat 7, Amsterdam 1081 BT, The Netherlands.

Olin Janssen

Alzheimer Centre Limburg, Department of Psychiatry and Neuropsychology, School for Mental Health and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands

Anneke L. Francke

Nivel, Netherlands Institute for Health Services Research, Utrecht, The Netherlands

Amsterdam UMC, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Department of Public and Occupational Health, Amsterdam Public Health research institute, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Pieter-Jelle Visser

Alzheimer Centre Limburg, Department of Psychiatry and Neuropsychology, School for Mental Health and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands

Amsterdam UMC, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Department of Neurology, Alzheimer Centre Amsterdam, Amsterdam Neuroscience, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Hein P.J. van Hout

Amsterdam UMC, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Department of General Practice and Elderly Care Medicine, Amsterdam Public Health research institute, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Correspondence

Olin Janssen

Anneke L. Francke

Pieter-Jelle Visser

Hein P.J. van Hout

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Stage : Moderate Decline

During this period, the problems in thinking and reasoning that you noticed in stage 3 get more obvious, and new issues appear. Your friend or family member might:

• Forget details about themselves
• Have trouble putting the right date and amount on a check
• Forget what month or season it is
• Have trouble cooking meals or even ordering from a menu
• Struggle to use the telephone
• Not understand what is said to them
• Struggle to do tasks with multiple steps like cleaning the house.

You can help with everyday chores and their safety. Make sure they aren’t driving anymore, and that no one tries to take advantage of them financially.

Tips For Providing Compassionate Care

Although learning about what happens during the final stage of Alzheimers disease can feel upsetting, knowing what to expect empowers you and your loved one to make decisions while you can. If your loved one hasnt reached this stage yet, now is the ideal time to talk about long-term plans for his or her care. For instance, your loved one may do best at home with a professional caregiver. If your loved one is already in this stage, your role now is to focus on helping him or her stay comfortable despite the symptoms. By putting together a team of caregivers who can help with meals, dressing, and providing calm opportunities to socialize, you can help your loved one move through the final stages of Alzheimers with the understanding that he or she is loved.

Alzheimers can be challenging for seniors to manage without assistance, and it can be just as challenging for families who dont have experience in providing Alzheimers care. TorontoHome Care Assistance provides Alzheimers care seniors and their families can depend on. Our proprietary Cognitive Therapeutics Method was designed to help seniors with Alzheimers and other memory-related conditions live happier and healthier lives. Home Care Assistance will work with you to customize a care plan thats just right for your loved ones needs. Call us today at 488-8777 to discuss how we can give you the peace of mind that comes from knowing your loved one is being cared for with professionalism and compassion.

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Stage : Age Associated Memory Impairment

This stage features occasional lapses of memory most frequently seen in:

• Forgetting where one has placed an object
• Forgetting names that were once very familiar

Oftentimes, this mild decline in memory is merely normal age-related cognitive decline, but it can also be one of the earliest signs of degenerative dementia. At this stage, signs are still virtually undetectable through clinical testing. Concern for early onset of dementia should arise with respect to other symptoms.

Why Knowing Life Expectancy Is Useful

Knowing what to expect, including life expectancy helps with planning. Someone predicted to survive for five or six years, as opposed to two years, will want to make more extensive plans, including getting an estate in order, activity planning, and budget. Knowing how quickly the disease is expected to progress symptomatically can impact care decisions. If the disease is predicted to come on very quickly, for example, then skipping traditional assisted living and looking into memory care or a nursing home might be the best option.

Knowing when full-time care becomes a requirement, either at-home or in a memory care residence, is especially useful given the high cost of care. It is estimated that 50% of nursing home residents have some level of dementia and over 60% of nursing home residents care is paid for by Medicaid. Medicaid eligibility is complicated, and families can spend up to 5 years waiting for a loved one with dementia to become Medicaid-eligible. Therefore, knowing how soon care is required can make a huge financial difference.

Contribute anonymously to our dementia life expectancy database. Start here.

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Alzheimer’s Disease And Dementia Life Expectancy

• Prevention

Researchers in 2016 estimated that there were 43.8 million people in the world with Alzheimer’s disease or other forms of dementia27 million women and 16.8 million men. These numbers are growing rapidly. In fact, it’s expected to more than double to 100 million by 2050. Here’s what you should know about Alzheimer’s disease and dementia life expectancy.

What Is The Life Expectancy For Someone With Dementia

This is an incredibly difficult question to answer as there are many influencing factors, including the persons age and gender, the type of dementia and the stage of the condition at diagnosis. The average life expectancy after diagnosis for someone with Alzheimers, the most common form of dementia is 10 years. However, dementia progresses differently in everyone, meaning people can live anywhere from 2 years to 26 years after diagnosis.

The main way in which health care professionals estimate dementia life expectancy is by using the Global Deterioration Scale , also called the Reisberg Scale. It shows the average time someone is expected to live depending on which stage of dementia they are at.

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