INTEGRATIVE LITERATURE REVIEWS AND META-ANALYSES Feeding and dementia: a systematic literature review

Feeding and dementia: a systematic literature review Aim. This paper reports a systematic review of the literature on interventions to promote oral nutritional intake of older people with dementia and feeding difficulty between 1993 and 2003. Background. Older people with dementia commonly experience difficulty with feeding, especially in the later stages of the condition. This topic and related nursing care was reviewed in 1993 and the conclusion was that there was little research into interventions that nurses could use to alleviate feeding difficulty. Method. A systematic review of the literature was carried out using the CINAHL, Medline, EMBASE and Cochrane databases and the search terms ‘feeding’, ‘eating’ and ‘dementia ’ combined as follows: ‘(feeding or eating) and (dementia)’. A second search was carried out combining the search terms ‘mealtimes ’ and ‘dementia ’ as follows: ‘mealtimes and dementia’. The literature search was carried out on 1 December 2003 and papers were included in the review if retrieved by 31 December 2003. English language papers only were retrieved