Dementia

...ba href=/dementia/a/b to cancer.

Calculating a person's chances of good health in old age is therefore tricky.

But scientists are finding that, generally, the time we are likely to spend ill at the end of our ever-increasing lives will drop thanks to medical advances and growing awareness of how to stay healthy.

Quality of life is improving for the elderly.

"If you look at what a 70-year-old person is doing now versus what a 70-year-old person was doing 50 years ago, it's totally different," says Arlan Richardson, director of the Barshop Institute for Ageing and Longevity Studies at the University of Texas.

"All you've got to look at is [the astronaut] John Glenn, who went [into space] when he was 77.

Three out of four of my grandparents died before they were 75 years of age, let alone going [into space]." But most elderly people will have to endure long-term illness, says Ann Bowling, a population scientist at University College London.

"Whether it's cancers or heart disease, they're not going to go away, but they are becoming more treatable.

People are less likely to die from those, but we're more likely to have to live with them." Predictions for health expectancy have changed over the past few decades.

"In the 1980s, life expectancy was increasing and the best data that we had suggested that for every increased year of life expectancy, a greater fraction was disabled life expectancy," says Richard Suzman, director of the social and behavioural research program at the US National Insti...

...ba href=/dementia/a/b, was charged with murder in an unrelated attack at a South Toledo nursing home.

Police said Mr.

Hawkins beat his roommate, Norbert Konwin, with a towel bar in their room March 10 at Foundation Park Care Center.

Mr.

Konwin, 77, who had Alzheimer's, sustained fractured ribs, a fractured nose, and a collapsed lung.

He was treated at Toledo Hospital for four days before returning to Foundation Park, where he died Friday.

A kidnapping charge filed against Mr.

Hawkins in Mrs.

Mack's case and a misdemeanor assault charge filed against him for another incident at a different group home in 2000 were dismissed last year.

"The reason the [Mack] case was dismissed was nobody was injured as a result of the incident, and he was an Alzheimer's patient," said John Weglian, chief of the special units division for the Lucas County Prosecutor's Office.

Mr.

Weglian said the state declined to prosecute both cases because of the circumstances surrounding Mr.

Hawkins' mental state and other factors.

"His Social Security benefits would be withheld had the [Mack] matter not been disposed of," Mr.

Weglian said.

Mr.

Weglian said he does not expect the same thing to happen in the Foundation Park case because Mr.

Konwin was killed.

Authorities said Foundation Park, which specializes in Alzheimer's and ba href=/dementia/a/b patients, did not notify the Ohio Department of Health or Toledo police of the assault on Mr.

Konwin.

Toledo Hospital spokesman Jenny Goldberg said she could not say what steps, if any, th...

...ba href=/dementia/a/b and could not answer questions about what had happened to her, was taken to o Charlotte Hungerford Hospital where she was treated for injuries and given several stitches over her eye.A police investigation concluded that Salmon, a nurses aide, was responsible for causing the woman to fall.Salmon had to surrender his license as a certified nurses aide as a condition of his suspended sentence.-Information from: Republican-American, http://www.rep-am.com © Copyright 2006 Associated Press.

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