A simple score to predict survival with dementia in the general population.

BACKGROUND/AIMS: This study was designed to develop a practical risk score for predicting 5-year survival after the diagnosis of dementia. METHODS: Using the Paquid Study (prospective, population-based, long-term cohort study), we created a prognosis score with incident cases of dementia and validated it in another prospective, population-based, long-term cohort study, the Three City Study. - RESULTS: Among the 3,777 subjects enrolled in the Paquid Study, 454 incident cases of dementia were included in this study. After a 5-year follow-up period, 319 (70.3%) were deceased. The score was constructed from three independent prognostic variables (gender, age at diagnosis and number of ADL restricted). The discriminant ability of the score was good with a c index of 0.754. Sensitivity was 64.7% and specificity 76.3%. In the validation cohort, the discriminant ability of the prognostic score with c statistics was 0.700. Sensitivity was 26.3% and specificity 95.4%. CONCLUSIONS: The prognostic factors selected in the predictive model are easily assessable, so this simple score could provide helpful information for the management of dementia, particularly to identify patients with duration of the disease greater than 5 years.

Dementia case management effectiveness on health care costs and resource utilization: a systematic review of randomized controlled trials.

The growing number of dementia patients leads to both policy, economic and health organization constraints. Many healthcare systems have developed case management programs in order to optimize dementia patients and caregivers care and services delivery. Nevertheless, to what extend case management programs can lead to an improvement of care and expenditures savings is not known. Thus, the objective of this paper was to analyse the efficacy of case management programs on health care cost, institutionalization and hospitalization. A systematic review of randomized controlled trials was therefore conducted of the databases MEDLINE and SCOPUS up to September 2009. Included were English language randomized controlled trials of case management for community dwelling dementia patients and their caregivers evaluating costs, institutionalization and hospitalization. An evaluation of the methodological quality was performed. Thirteen relevant studies concerning 12 trials were identified and included. None of the 7 low quality studies reported positive impact of case management on the outcomes of interest. Among the 6 good quality studies, 4 reported positive impact on institutionalization delay, institutionalization length or nursing home admission rate. In none of the good quality studies was evidence found for savings in health care expenditures or reduction in hospitalization recourse. The weak convincing evidences from randomized trials do not allow any conclusion about the efficacy of case management for dementia patient and caregivers on costs and resource utilization. Further research should focus on determining subgroups of caregivers who could benefit the most from case management.