Medics who analysed data from 235 studies have revealed how long a person can expect to live after being diagnosed with dementia.
Previous survival estimates for those hit by the brain-wasting condition have varied widely, and few studies had considered how much time was likely to pass before people are admitted to nursing homes.
Now, experts led by academics from Erasmus MC University Medical Centre in the Netherlands have found that typical survival after diagnosis is “strongly dependent on age”.
Life expectancy of people diagnosed with dementia ranges from nine years at age 60 to 4.5 years at age 85 for women, and from 6.5 to just over two years, respectively, in men.
Overall, women had shorter survival after diagnosis compared with men because women tend to be diagnosed later in life.
The team 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 5.5 million people and 79 studies reported on nursing home admission among 352,990 people.
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 US.
The average time before a patient moved to a nursing home after diagnosis was 3.3 years. Some 13% of people moved to a nursing home in the year after their diagnosis. This increased to 57% 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 BMJ.
The number of people with dementia in the UK is projected to continue rising due to the country’s ageing population.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting has faced criticism in recent days 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.
