Nursing home residents with Huntington's disease: Heterogeneity in characteristics and functioning

In Huntington's disease (HD), admission to a nursing home (NH) is required in advanced disease stages. To gain insight in care needs, more knowledge is needed on the functioning of this group.

Describing patient and disease characteristics, their functioning, and gender differences.

A cross-sectional descriptive design was used to collect data of 173 patients living in eight Dutch HD-specialized NHs. Data were collected on characteristics and functioning. We tested for gender differences.

Mean age was 58.3 years and 49.7% were men. Activities of daily living and cognition varied from 46 to 49% mildly impaired to 22-23% severely impaired. Communication was severely impaired in 24%. Social functioning was low in 31% and high in 34%. A majority of patients used psychotropic medications (80.3%) and showed neuropsychiatric signs (74%). Women were on average more dependent in ADL (severely impaired 33.3% vs 12.8%), more often depressed (26.4% vs 11.6%), and prescribed antidepressant medications more often (64.4% vs 48.8%) than men.

The population of HD patients in NHs is heterogeneous in terms of patient and disease characteristics, and functioning. As a consequence, care needs are complex leading to implications for the required expertise of staff to provide adequate care and treatment.