Advanced Dementia Patients Nursing homes and hospitals should stop the widespread use of using stomach tubes to feed people with advanced Alzheimers disease or other types of dementia according to articles in the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association . There is no evidence that such feeding is beneficial to patients and, in fact, may be harmful by causing diarrhea, bloating, infections, and other problems. The problem appears to be that it is more costly to pay people to feed patients than it is to use tubes, and tube fed patients do not become better nourished or live longer. Patients' families need to understand that Alzheimers disease is fatal with a loss of appetite and inability to eat often signs of its final stages. Physicians having experience with terminal patients who had stopped eating and drinking and who remained lucid said that those not given food or water did not suffer hunger or thirst and could be kept comfortable with ice chips and swabs to moisten the mouth and lips.
Dehydration leads patients to lapse into comas and die peacefully.
A spokes- person for the American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging are trying to find ways to train more people to help patients eat. Patients having the most pain were those whose care was no longer being coordinated by their primary care physician. For more information, contact the Department of Community Health.