Palliative care for dementia patients.

Dementia is a life-limiting disease without curative treatments but the data suggest that advanced dementia is not viewed as a terminal diagnosis by physicians. Although symptoms of dementia and cancer patients are similar, palliative care is less frequently proposed for dementia patients. However, professionals and family members of demented patients strongly favor comfort care for end-stage dementia. To improve the patients' relief near the end of life, advance care planning with patients and their proxies should be encouraged. It should start as soon as possible so that the patient can still be actively involved and his preferences, values, needs and beliefs elicited. Written advance directives or enrollment in hospice care are associated with quality of dying. Yet caregivers are sometimes concerned about applying palliative care too early or that advance plans would be invalidated if relatives or patients changed their mind. Therefore, general practitioners and palliative care specialists need to better collaborate to provide greater information and improve comfort and quality of life of dementia patients.