Three-year survival probabilities after dementia diagnosis can be predicted using 4-5 routinely collected patient characteristics, researchers say.

Higher age, male sex, increased comorbidity burden and lower cognitive function at diagnosis were all significant predictors of mortality in the Swedish population-based study.

Dementia subtype was also significant — with a diagnosis of non-Alzheimer dementia being a predictor of earlier mortality — but only for patients diagnosed at a specialist memory clinic rather than in primary care.

The study was led by researchers from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, who conducted a nationwide registry-linkage study, capturing all memory clinics and roughly 75% of the country’s primary care facilities.