DEMENTIA is a devastating diagnosis, often described as robbing people of their ability to think, learn and remember.
As dementia progresses, it damages the brain so much it eventually affects areas that control vital functions like breathing and swallowing.
When it comes to how long a person will live after a diagnosis, a new study has suggested it could be as little as two years.
Scientists have suggested the life expectancy time frame after being diagnosed with dementia is between two and nine years.
And various factors appear to contribute to life expectancy, with age playing a key part.
The study also explored how long people might live at home before moving to a nursing home.
Researchers examined all studies between 1984 and 2024 which reported on survival or nursing home admission for people with dementia.
A total of 235 studies reported on survival among more than 5.5million people and 79 studies reported on nursing home admission among 352,990 people.
Experts led by academics from Erasmus MC University Medical Centre in the Netherlands found that average survival after diagnosis was “strongly dependent on age”.
Men diagnosed at 65 could expect to survive for 5.7 years, while those diagnosed when they were 85 could expect 2.2 years.
Women diagnosed at 65 could expect to live up to 8.9 years, while those at 85 years could expect 4.5 years.
However, the researchers found that overall, women had shorter survival after diagnosis compared with men because women tended to be diagnosed later in life.
People with Alzheimer’s disease appeared to survive for 1.4 years longer than those with other forms of dementia.
The researchers also found differences over the continents, with people in Asia expected to live 1.4 years longer after a diagnosis than those in Europe or the United States.
The average time before a patient moved to a nursing home after diagnosis was 3.3 years.
Some 13 per cent of people moved to a nursing home in the year after their diagnosis.
This increased to 57 per cent after five years.
“About one third of remaining life expectancy was lived in nursing homes, with more than half of people moving to a nursing home within five years after a dementia diagnosis,” the authors wrote in the British Medical Journal.
More than 944,000 people in the UK have dementia, and around two thirds of them have Alzheimer’s disease.
Dementia is the country’s leading cause of death. There is no cure.
The condition is expected to cost the UK £42billion in 2024, increasing to £90billion by 2040, according to Alzheimer’s Society.
Dementia – the most common form of which is Alzheimer’s – comes on slowly over time.
As the disease progresses, symptoms can become more severe.
But at the beginning, the symptoms can be subtle or mistaken for normal memory issues related to ageing.
The US National Institute on Aging gives some examples of what is considered normal forgetfulness in old age, and dementia disease.
You can refer to these above.
For example, it is normal for an ageing person to forget which word to use from time-to-time, but difficulting having conversation would be more indicative of dementia.
Katie Puckering, Head of Alzheimer’s Research UK’s Information Services team, previously told The Sun: “We quite commonly as humans put our car keys somewhere out of the ordinary and it takes longer for us to find them.
“As you get older, it takes longer for you to recall, or you really have to think; What was I doing? Where was I? What distracted me? Was it that I had to let the dog out? And then you find the keys by the back door.
“That process of retrieving the information is just a bit slower in people as they age.
“In dementia, someone may not be able to recall that information and what they did when they came into the house.
“What may also happen is they might put it somewhere it really doesn’t belong. For example, rather than putting the milk back in the fridge, they put the kettle in the fridge.”
Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting this month faced criticism for not giving a hard deadline for his plans to create a National Care Service aimed at tackling the massive costs of social care.
An independent commission is expected to begin exploring the future of the service in the spring, but its timeline means proposals for the long-term funding and major reform of social care in England may not be delivered until 2028.
Mr Streeting defended the long-term nature of his plans on Tuesday, telling LBC radio that consensus with other political parties is needed because “politics has torpedoed good ideas” in the past.
Sir Andrew Dilnot, an economist who was the architect of the original plans for a care costs cap more than a decade ago, told MPs on Wednesday that it is “blindingly… bleedin’ obvious” that adult social care reform must be addressed.
He told the House of Commons Health and Social Care Committee that three years for the newly announced commission on social care to produce a final report is “an inappropriate length of time”.
