Mortality and Risk Factors in Psychiatric Inpatient with Dementia: A 13-year Long-Term Data Analysis

ABSTRACT Objective: The study aimed at identifying mortality and risk factors of psychiatric inpatients with dementia, a 13-year long-term data analysis. Method: This study adopted retrospective cohort design. The original claims data of 1 million randomly sampled beneficiaries between 1997 and 2010 from Taiwan’s National Health Insurance Research Database were analyzed. Mortality risk and risk factors were assessed using Cox regression analysis. Results: Among 320 dementia patients, a total of 83.4% had Alzheimer disease and 16.6% had vascular dementia. The mortality rates within 1 year after admission were reported for patients with vascular dementia (41.7%) and patients with Alzheimer disease (19.1%). A 1-year increase in age was associated with 3% increase in the risk of hospitalization mortality. Mortality risk among male inpatients was 2.9 times higher than that of female inpatients (P<0.001). The mortality risks among delirium inpatients, those with delusional symptoms, and those with depression had hazard ratios of 2.84 (P=0.004), 2.17 (P=0.008), and 1.82 (P=0.075) respectively, relative to inpatients with uncomplicated symptoms. Conclusion: The factors that influenced the mortality of dementia patients admitted to the psychiatric department were male sex, old age, delirium symptoms, and delusional symptoms.