Tuesday, March 1, 2022 (HealthDay News)-In the first year of the pandemic, a new study found that the risk of death for older Americans with Alzheimer’s disease increased by nearly 26%.
Researchers have found that the minority faced even higher mortality rates as a direct result of COVID or due to medical turmoil.
Key Causes: Unintentional fallout due to sudden changes to health delivery, according to research leader Dr. Lauren Gilstrap, an assistant professor of health policy at the Dartmouth Institute in Lebanon, New Hampshire.
“Care for inpatients has diminished, care for outpatients has moved to telemedicine platforms, and there have been significant changes to the day-to-day operations of nursing facilities, including blockages and rigorous visit procedures,” she said. increase.
And when it comes to who is most vulnerable to rapid changes in healthcare services, Gilstrap said, “Elderly people with cognitive impairment, such as Alzheimer’s disease and related dementia, are at or near the top of the list. I have. “
In this study, her team compared the mortality rates of about 27 million Americans in 2019 with the same number of patients in 2020.
The average age is 74 to 84 years, some live at home and some live in nursing homes. In both years, nearly 10% had Alzheimer’s disease or another form of dementia.
Researchers knew that during the pandemic, studies would incorporate increased mortality in most, if not all, segments of society. Emphasizing that, they found a 14% increased risk of death between 2019 and 2020 among the elderly without Alzheimer’s disease.
However, the surge in mortality risk for older people with Alzheimer’s disease was almost double that for non-Alzheimer’s disease patients, she said.
In the February 28 issue of JAMA NeurologyGilstrap and her colleagues report two observations revealed after digging deeper into the data.
First: Patients with mental health disorders were even more vulnerable than the data suggests at first glance.
This became apparent when researchers focused on the regions of the United States with the lowest rates of COVID throughout 2020.
In these areas, there was actually no COVID-related increase in mortality risk for patients without Alzheimer’s disease or other dementia.
In contrast, home-based elderly people with Alzheimer’s disease in areas with the lowest risk of COVID had an average 8% increased risk of dying during a pandemic. Studies have shown that among residents of elderly housing with dementia, the risk is even higher, averaging 14%.
The latter figure highlights certain groups of older people with Alzheimer’s disease / dementia who were most vulnerable during the pandemic, such as those living in elderly housing with care and members of racial and ethnic minority groups. It speaks of the second observation.
On the latter side, the numbers are clear, Gilstrap said. The risk of death for all elderly people with Alzheimer’s disease / dementia increased by 26% in 2020, but was fixed at 36% for patients with Alzheimer’s disease in Asia. 37% of black patients; over 40% of Hispanic patients.
Dr. Elan Gutterman, an assistant professor of neurology at the University of California, San Francisco, wrote an editorial accompanying this study.
She said the findings again show that COVID is affecting people’s daily lives. She said people were more isolated. Access to medical care has become difficult and community resources have changed.
“These changes are strongly felt by vulnerable people, including people with dementia, suggesting that these changes not only make things harder to get things done, but also lead to increased deaths. “It’s done,” Guterman added.
It is important for Researcher Gilstrap to think differently about people with cognitive impairment in order to focus on caring for those who are least capable of coping with major healthcare upheavals, such as the elderly with dementia. Said.
For more information
For more information on the risks faced by people with dementia during a pandemic, visit AARP.
Sources: Lauren Gilstrap, MD, MPH, Assistant Professor, Medicine, Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, and Assistant Professor, Health Policy, Dartmouth Institute, Lebanon, New Hampshire. Dr. Elan Gutterman, Associate Professor of Neurology, University of California, San Francisco. JAMA NeurologyFebruary 28, 2022
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