[Dementia: growing disaster or declining epidemic?]

Abstract

- There is currently a lot of uncertainty about the future prevalence of dementia. Not only increasing age, but also educational level and lifestyle of the population appear to play a role.- There is little scientific and societal attention for the great uncertainty around average incidence and prevalence estimates for dementia.- When estimating the prognosis of people with dementia, the average disease course is often used as a basis, while this is not at all representative of the individual course of most patients.- The beneficial findings of recent lifestyle intervention studies ask for more targeted prevention strategies for risk groups. There is no standard preventative strategy which works equally well for everyone.- Given the large influence of dementia-related publications on the expectations of people regarding their ageing, it is important to present measures of dispersion alongside all study results.