Dementia, life expectancy and nursing home care

Researchers from a large meta-analysis of relevant studies have reported that the average life expectancy of people with dementia at time of diagnosis ranges from 5.7 years at age 65 to 2.2 at age 85 for males and from 8.0 to 4.5 years, respectively, for females.

The findings were published on Jan. 8, 2025 in the British Medical Journal/BMJ.

Notably, survival was longer among Asian populations and among subjects diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.

They also reported that following a dementia diagnosis, about one third of life was lived in a nursing home.

More than half of the subjects moved to a nursing home within five years following a dementia diagnosis.

As background for the study, the authors said, “Nearly 10 million people worldwide receive a diagnosis of dementia every year, but survival estimates vary widely, and few studies have assessed prognosis (the likely course of the condition) in terms of time to nursing home admission.”

In order to address these issues, the investigators searched databases for relevant studies on survival or nursing home admission among people with dementia.

They identified 261 eligible studies published between 1984 and 2024, and included the extracted data in the new meta-analysis.

Of these studies, 235 evaluated for survival among 5,553,960 subjects and 79 evaluated nursing home admission among 352,990 subjects.

They reported that median survival from diagnosis was strongly dependent on age, ranging from 8.9 years at mean age 60 for women to 2.2 years at mean age 85 for men.

Women appeared to have shorter survival than men (mean difference 4.1 years) due to later age at diagnosis.

Median survival was 1.2 to 1.4 years longer in Asian subjects than in those from the US and Europe, and it was 1.4 years longer for those with Alzheimer’s disease compared with other types of dementia.

Life expectancy of people with dementia at time of diagnosis ranged from 5.7 years at age 65 to 2.2 at age 85 for men and from 8.0 to 4.5, respectively, for women

Average time to nursing home admission was just over 3 years, with 13% of people admitted during the year following diagnosis. This increased to 35% at three years and 57% at five years.

The authors noted that their search methodology and data extraction enabled analyses of the largest number of studies to date, “offering potential for individualized prognostic information and care planning.”

They added, “Future studies on individualised prognosis should ideally include patients at time of diagnosis, accounting for personal factors, social factors, disease stage, and comorbidity, while assessing relevant functional outcome measures above and beyond survival alone.”