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Fewer nursing home residents with dementia are receiving feeding tubes, a result of increasing evidence that suggests the practice causes unnecessary suffering and does little to prolong life.
The proportion of advanced dementia patients who had feeding tubes placed when they were unable eat or drink on their own dropped 50 percent between 2000 to 2014 (12 to 6 percent), according to a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Researchers with the Hebrew SeniorLife Institute for Aging Research, an affiliation of Harvard University, analyzed data from more than 71,000 nursing home residents across the U.S.
They also found that feeding tube use decreased across racial groups, but remained higher among blacks, declining from 38 to 18 percent. Among white residents, insertion rates declined from 9 to 3 percent.