Focus on dementia - January 2016

Preventing well

• There is evidence that some factors - particularly around cardiovascular risk - can impact on the risk of developing dementia. To have their greatest impact on reducing dementia risk these factors should be controlled throughout middle age (45-64).

Diagnosing well

• Diagnosis information is collected from GP practices to give a national picture of the prevalence of diagnosed dementia:

• Diagnosed prevalence increased from 643 per 100,000 in April 2014 to 755 per 100,000 in December 2015, which is 423,000 diagnoses out of 56.0m registered  patients.

• Recording inconsistencies are found in nearly half of inpatient admissions for people previously recorded as having dementia.

Supporting well

• Carers of people with dementia assess their own quality of life as 7.7 out of 12 overall. This is lowest in London at 7.3 and highest in the North East at 8.4.

• 39 per cent of carers spent 100 or more hours each week looking after or caring for a person with dementia, with 52 per cent spending 50 hours or more per week.

• Over half (51 per cent) of carers had been in their caring role for more than five years.

Living well

• Prescriptions of the four National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) appraised Alzheimer's disease (the commonest cause of dementia)  medicines increased from 502,000 items in 2004 to 3.0 million items in 2014

• At the end of September 2015, there were 109,000 assignments to one of the three mental health care clusters covering cognitive impairment or dementia at:

  • moderate need

  • high need

  • or high physical need or engagement

• Looking at all records from April 2012 to March 2015;

  • The median time for progression between 'moderate need' and 'high need' is 3 years and 2 months.

  • The median time for progression between 'high need' and 'high physical need of engagement' is 2 years and 9 months.

Dementia and mortality

• We analysed the mental health data linked to ONS mortality data to provide information on progression between dementia associated care clusters and death.
  The results of the survival analysis provide a median survival time of 3 years 6 months, from when patients are first assessed as having 'cognitive impairment or dementia at moderate need'.

  • Median survival from first assessment with 'cognitive impairment or dementia at high need' is 2 year 3 months.

  • Median survival from first assessment with 'cognitive impairment or dementia at high physical need or engagement' is 1 year and 8 months