“Nearly 75% of older Americans with dementia given drugs that don’t help them despite serious risks: Study,” by Mihika Basu, MEAAW News Quote: “Close to three-quarters of older adults with dementia have filled prescriptions for medicines that act on their brain and nervous system, but are not designed for dementia, according to researchers. This is despite the special risks that such drugs carry for older adults, and the lack of evidence that they actually ease the dementia-related behavior problems that often prompt a doctor’s prescription in patients with Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders, they argue. Some of the drugs have
Read More

“Nursing Home Families Yearn to Visit Loved Ones Again,” by Paula Span, New York Times Quote: “Almost by definition, long-term care residents have limited life spans; nursing home residents are particularly fragile. Do they so value safety over quality of life that they want to spend their last months or years separated from their loved ones? Has anyone asked them?”     LTC Comment (from Stephen A. Moses, President, Center for Long-Term Care Reform): Pandemics and freedom do not mix well.        
Read More

“When Covid-19 Hit, Many Elderly Were Left to Die,” by Matina Stevis-Gridneff, Matt Apuzzo and Monika Pronczuk, New York Times Quote: “Of all the missteps by governments during the coronavirus pandemic, few have had such an immediate and devastating impact as the failure to protect nursing homes. Tens of thousands of older people died — casualties not only of the virus, but of more than a decade of ignored warnings that nursing homes were vulnerable. Public health officials around the world excluded nursing homes from their pandemic preparedness plans and omitted residents from the mathematical models used to guide their
Read More

“Dementia on the Retreat in the U.S. and Europe,” by Gina Kolata, New York Times Quote: “Despite the lack of effective treatments or preventive strategies, the dementia epidemic is on the wane in the United States and Europe, scientists reported on Monday. The risk for a person to develop dementia over a lifetime is now 13 percent lower than it was in 2010. Incidence rates at every age have steadily declined over the past quarter-century. If the trend continues, the paper’s authors note, there will be 15 million fewer people in Europe and the United States with dementia than there are
Read More