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Immediate causes of death of demented and non-demented elderly
Objective:
To investigate the immediate causes of death, in autopsied demented and non-demented elderly.
Design:
Retrospective clinicopathologic correlations.
Setting:
Acute and intermediate care geriatric hospital.
Participants:
342 hospitalized demented and non-demented elderly (mean age 84.94 +/- 6.9 years) who underwent consecutive postmortem examinations: 120 demented patients with either vascular dementia (VaD, n = 34), mixed dementia (MD, n = 65) or Alzheimer's disease (AD, n=21) neuropathologically confirmed and 222 nondemented elderly.
Results:
Primary causes of death were similar in both demented and non-demented patients; the commonest were cardiovascular disease and bronchopneumonia. Cardiac causes of death and especially cardiac failure were more frequent in VaD than in AD or MD (respectively P = 0.027 and 0.005). Dementia was an underlying but never a primary cause of death.
Conclusions:
Immediate causes of death are similar in elderly demented and non-demented patients.