Costs of the in-home patients affected by dementia

In 2000, Alzheimer's disease (AD) and other dementias were the third most expensive health conditions in the USA and in 2005 their annual costs amounted to more than $148 billion. An observational, non-randomized study aimed to evaluate direct costs of demented patients in their homes. Two hundred thirty-six informal caregivers have been enrolled. A financial support, represented by a disability living allowance (15.3%) or attendance allowance (3.4%), was presented in just 19.7% of the cases. Patients receiving assistance from an employed carer were 39% with a mean cost of 800 Euro/month. Receiving assistance from an employed carer is not correlated with cognitive and functional impairment, with the age of the caregiver and with the duration of the disease (t=1.03; t=-0.86; t=1.41; t=-0.16, respectively). The informal caregivers declared that they thoughts about the possibility of institutionalize the patient were 20.9%. The present study underlines the discrepancy between subjects having assistance from an employed caregiver and subjects receiving financial supports. It often happens that patients not reaching the minimum requisites for social assistant or financial support, need at least a supervision.