A9h academic search complete - exported 11/7/2016

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is one of the leading causes of dependency among older adults and of institutionalization in Europe. The number of people with AD is estimated in 10 million people and the cost of the disease has been recently estimated in 100.000 million of euros per year in the European Union (European Brain Council, 2011). There is nowadays no effective treatment of the disease.

The article reports that Andrew Dilnot, chairman of the Commission on Funding of Care and Support, has ruled out having free personal care in England. He states that free personal care will not be recommended by the commission as it will not be resilient enough if implemented. He mentions that the commission will put forward the suggestion of having partnership approach which would combine resources from state, informal carers and individuals.

Informal carers of people with Alzheimer's disease require access to high-quality information, which may be available through the Internet. Tools that have been developed to evaluate the contents of health-related web sites tend to be generic and not specific for diseases or patient groups. The aim of this study was to develop a tool that was specifically designed to evaluate web sites that provide information about Alzheimer's disease for informal carers of people with the disease. The tool was used to evaluate a sample of 15 web sites.

This cohort study, aims to explore formal care provision to stroke survivors and their informal carers in the community in the UK. An initial cohort of 105 cohabitant carers of first-time stroke patients was recruited while the stroke patient was in hospital. Structured face-to-face interviews were carried out with carers prior to discharge of the stroke patient home, at 6 weeks after discharge, and 15 months after stroke.

The article discusses research by Livingston, Leavey, and Manela on dementia and carer involvement and a study by Thuné-Boyle, Sampson, and Jones on the understanding of informal carers' and healthcare professionals of advanced dementia and their attitudes towards end of life care. Livingston's research identified five core problematic areas including accessing dementia-related services, care homes, and legal / financial matters.