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Respected Contributor
Posts: 2,233
Registered: ‎07-18-2015

Do patients actually die from Alzheimer's or dementia? Or do they die from accompaning  diseases?

Honored Contributor
Posts: 8,567
Registered: ‎03-14-2010

Re: WHAT DO PATIENTS DIE OF?

[ Edited ]

@Flatbush wrote:

Do patients actually die from Alzheimer's or dementia? Or do they die from accompaning  diseases?


 

@Flatbush   I put your question into the search on google and there is a lot of info available. I think if one reads the stages of the disease, it would be helpful in understanding it all. My father died from the disease.

 

Patients die from complications/end stages of the Alzheimer's disease...which vary from patient to patient  Smiley Happy

Esteemed Contributor
Posts: 5,057
Registered: ‎05-24-2010

Re: WHAT DO PATIENTS DIE OF?

Especially swallowing, since the brain controls that function alzheimers patients can aspirate resulting in aspiration pneumonia. When they can no longer walk they are susceptible to blood clots. All kinds of problems in the late stages of this horrible disease.

 

Honored Contributor
Posts: 9,745
Registered: ‎03-09-2010

Re: WHAT DO PATIENTS DIE OF?

Just as people rarely die from the cancer, the ravages related thereto are the case of death and so is the same with many systemic illness --- it is not unusual that death is caused from the secondary complications of the disease and not the "named" disease from which one dies.  

 

Many of these cancer insurance companies got around paying for cancer deaths early on because patients would die of things like brain hemorrhages, liver failure, secondary bleeding, kidney failure, sepsis, etc.  

Esteemed Contributor
Posts: 7,652
Registered: ‎03-09-2010

Re: WHAT DO PATIENTS DIE OF?

@Nonametoday , my older sister had early onset Alzheimer’s and died of sepsis.  LM

Honored Contributor
Posts: 13,401
Registered: ‎07-15-2016

Re: WHAT DO PATIENTS DIE OF?

I can’t recall the name of the drug, but one of the side effects is congestive heart failure. My aunt was prescribed that drug and died of congestive heart failure.
Honored Contributor
Posts: 8,074
Registered: ‎10-03-2014

Re: WHAT DO PATIENTS DIE OF?

They usually die from something else before Alzheimer's kills them.  Complications from brain degeneration.  Lose ability to feed themselves, falls requiring surgery, pneumonia and other infections, etc.

 

One at 93 I knew died of congestive heart failure that would have caused her death if she hadn't had Alzheimer's.  Another was placed in a nursing home and died from septicemia from a neglected kidney infection.  

Super Contributor
Posts: 308
Registered: ‎12-28-2017

Re: WHAT DO PATIENTS DIE OF?

As the other posters have mentioned, people die from complications related to Alzheimer's/dementia - pneumonia, sepsis, blood clots, etc.  (I am an RN going on 35 years now working in long-term care for the past 25).

 

My step-mother recently passed away, she was in a nursing home with vascular dementia, but her cause of death was pulmonary embolism (blood clot in the lung). 

Valued Contributor
Posts: 936
Registered: ‎03-12-2010

Re: WHAT DO PATIENTS DIE OF?

My mother has dementia.The nursing home doctor will not stop giving her Seroquel.Now that she is letargic in a wheelchair and barely talks,she shouldn't be given sedatives anymore.

I believe the side effects of Seroquel will be fatal for her.

When she went in this nursing home,she was walking with her cane and she talked like a normal person.

Her dementia was mostly lack of memory.The nurse told me in the first months my mom was walking up and down with no purpose (these were her words).They were giving her Seroquel as needed many times a day.I found out only because I saw her list of meds and I started asking questions.

Esteemed Contributor
Posts: 6,120
Registered: ‎03-29-2019

Re: WHAT DO PATIENTS DIE OF?

At the end stage of dementia with my dad, he became violent, a fall risk, an lost all sense of modesty.

 

What killed him in the end was a sudden heart attack.

 

Every patient is different, so what takes one, will not take another.

The Sky looks different when you have someone you love up there.