Hospital May Speed Decline in Alzheimer’s

A hospital stay greatly increases the chances that a person with Alzheimer’s disease will enter a nursing home or die in the next year, a new study finds. Other recent research showed that people with Alzheimer’s have more hospital stays than other older adults. The new study showed the consequences. It focused on 771 Alzheimer’s patients. All of them were living at home and fairly high-functioning. Medical records showed that about half of them had a hospital stay. About half of this group had delirium in the hospital. People with delirium may be extremely agitated and confused. Among those who did not have a hospital stay, about 4% entered a nursing home each year. About 2% died. But in the year after a hospital stay, 29% went into a nursing home and 9% died. Among those who had delirium, 43% moved to a nursing home in the next year. About 15% died.