Cognitive impairment and mortality--an issue worth remembering.
This edition of the Journal of Insurance Medicine contains its third article addressing the mortality implications of cognitive impairment. In 2007, Vecchione and Golus reported the mortality (over an average of 7 years) of a cohort of employer-sponsored, long-term care (LTC) insurance applicants comparing those who were declined for cognitive impairment with those approved. The results of their analysis demonstrated a significant difference in mortality between applicants with low Delayed Word Recall (DWR) scores (0-5) vs the group with DWR scores of 6-10. One of the limitations of the Vecchione and Golus study was that its dataset consisted of a cohort of group LTC applicants potentially limiting its applicability to a population of individually underwritten life insurance applicants.
Margolis
Bruce
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D003071:Cognition; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000401:mortality*; D006801:Humans; D011594:Psychometrics; D018570:Risk Assessment; D014481:United States / Q000453:epidemiology