ABSTRACT
Only within the past 10 years has it been generally acknowledged within the palliative care literature in the UK that diseases manifesting a dementia syndrome are terminal illnesses (Black and Jolley 1990, 1991; Jolley and Baxter 1997; McCarthy et al 1997; Addington-Hall 2000). The admission of people with dementia into a hospice programme of care has been promoted in the USA since the early 1980s (Volicer 1986, 1997; Brechling and Kuhn 1989; Luchins and Hanrahan 1993; Hanrahan and Luchins 1995a, b; Luchins et al. 1997; Hanrahan et al. 1999). In the USA, however, if they are admitted to an acute unit, these people will often receive aggressive treatment for their illnesses (Ahronheim et al. 1996). The claim by Luchins and Hanrahan (1993), that older people who receive hospice care rarely have a primary diagnosis of a dementia syndrome, is equally true for the provision of palliative care in the UK. In the UK, the majority of palliative care teams do not include people with end-stage dementia in their remit (LloydWilliams 1996).
