The problems encountered by older pepple with dementia in relation to food and some recent research into alleviating feeding difficulty

1. Feeding difficulty in
dementia
Roger Watson

2. What is dementia?
• Various brain disorders that have, in common, loss of brain
function which is progressive and, eventually, severe.
• How many people have dementia?
– 750,000 in UK (population 50 million)
– 353,800 in Australia (population 24million)

3. What causes dementia?
 Genetics
 Co-morbidity
 Lifestyle
 Infection
 Old age?: 40-65 1 in 1000
65+ 1 in 50
70+ 1 in 20
80+ 1 in 5
90+ 1 in 2
• At present there is no ‘cure’ for dementia

4. What happens to someone with dementia?
• Progressive cognitive decline:
 loss of memory
 subtle changes in personality
• Behavioural change:
 wandering
 aggression
 incontinence
 problems with eating

5. Food and dementia
• Almost inevitable disturbances to eating in dementia with
decline in eating towards the terminal stages
• Weight loss is also associated with dementia but this may
not just be the result of eating difficulty
• In fact, it has been demonstrated that weight loss can
precede the onset of dementia

7. Records identified = 353
Remaining after
duplicates removed and
papers screened = 13
Discarded =
340
Qualitative synthesis = 13
Meta-analysis = 0

8. Conclusions
• General methodological weakness:
• Small samples (type II error)
• Confounding variables
• Impossibility of ‘blinding’ participants
• ‘Bottom drawer’ phenomenon
• How do we know what is clinically significant?

9. Montessori and spaced-retrieval methods
Maria Montessori
• Spaced retrieval, also known as expanded retrieval or
uniform retrieval, is a learning technique, which requires
users to rehearse information to be learned at different and
increasing spaced intervals of time or a set uniform amount
of time.

10. Montessori and spaced-retrieval methods
• Procedural memory is a part of the long-
term memory that is responsible for knowing how to do
things, also known as motor skills. As the name
implies, procedural memory stores information on how
to perform certain procedures, such as walking, talking and
riding a bike.

15. r.watson@hull.ac.uk
0000-0001-8040-7625
@rwatson1955