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Over the course of 50 years, the incidence of dementia as a cause of death has risen significantly, new figures from the National Institute of Public Health show.
Dementia accounted for 9.8 percent of all recorded causes of death in 2019, according to recent figures from the Register of Causes of Death.
The incidence increases dramatically with age. Among people over the age of 90, 16 percent had dementia as a cause of death.
Also read: Alzheimer’s is the disease Norwegians fear the most
The cause of death registry was released Thursday and shows that 3,986 people had dementia as the underlying cause of death last year.
This corresponds to 86 cases per 100,000 inhabitants. Of them, 67% were women and 84% were 80 years or older, according to the National Institute of Public Health.
The majority of those who received dementia as a cause of death (92%) died in a nursing home or other health facility. Only 3.4 percent died in hospitals.
Dementia as a cause of death
- Dementia is a collective term for various conditions in the brain that lead to gradual deterioration of memory and at least one other cognitive function while maintaining consciousness.
- The condition often leads to reduced function in daily life and a change in behavior. There are an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 people with dementia in Norway.
- The Causes of Death Registry distinguishes between different forms of dementia, but the incidence usually falls into three main groups: Alzheimer’s disease, vascular dementia, and unspecified (senile) dementia.
- It is rare that brain damage related to dementia is the mechanism that causes death. However, dementia is often mentioned as the cause of death for many of these patients, according to FHI. In all of Norway in 2019, only ten autopsies concluded that dementia was the cause of death. In a Swedish study, researchers examined the results of autopsies among 200 patients with dementia. The most common causes of death found were pneumonia (34.3 percent), heart attack (30.4 percent), and pulmonary embolism (15.5 percent).
(Source: National Institute of Public Health)
Most people die of cancer, but the rate is decreasing
Measured in the number of deaths and the number of deaths per 100,000 people, cancer and cardiovascular disease were the most common causes of death in Norway last year.
According to FHI, the numbers will be important antecedents when looking at mortality both before and after the pandemic.
– The 2019 figures show which people died in the year before the pandemic. These figures will be an important basis for comparison when looking at mortality in the largest exceptional year after the last world war, says chief physician Marianne Sørlie Strøm in the NIPH Cause of Death Registry in a press release.
Since 2017, cancer has been the most common cause of death in Norway, but both the rate of cancer and cardiovascular disease have decreased in recent years.
In 2019, there were 10,753 deaths where the cause of death was cancer and 9,629 deaths where the cause of death was cardiovascular disease. The third most common cause of death was lung disease, before dementia and deaths from external causes, with the largest groups being accidents, suicide, and drug-induced deaths.
Also read: This increases the risk of dementia (+)
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The graph shows why this proxy agreement is historically good
