The Dementia Journey: Life Expectancy, Nursing Homes, and Care Planning

his podcast episode explores a major study analysing over 5.5 million dementia cases, revealing critical insights into life expectancy and nursing home admissions. Discover how prognosis is significantly affected by factors like age, sex, and the type of dementia. We discuss the wide range of survival times, from 2.2 years to 8.9 years, and how a large proportion of remaining life is spent in nursing homes, with a median time to admission of 3.3 years. Learn how these findings can help families and healthcare professionals better plan for and navigate the challenges of dementia. Brück, C.C., Mooldijk, S.S., Kuiper, L.M., Sambou, M.L., Licher, S., Mattace-Raso, F. and Wolters, F.J., 2025. Time to nursing home admission and death in people with dementia: systematic review and meta-analysis. bmj, 388.