Deaths of people with intellectual disabilities: Analysis of deaths in England from COVID-19 and other causes.
Pauline Heslop, Victoria Byrne, Rachel Calkin and 3 others
PMID 34272793WHAT IT FOUND
In England, people with intellectual disabilities who died with suspected or confirmed COVID-19 were much younger than the general population.
None had reported altered smell or taste, and reviewers noted problems recognising deterioration and accessing care.
Key findings
01Age at death differed from the general population: 4% of people with intellectual disabilities who died from COVID-19 were aged 85 and older, compared with 47% in the general population.
02No person in the COVID-19 death sample had reported loss of smell or taste, although it is a key symptom in the general population.
03Reviewers raised concerns about detecting deterioration, including carers' subtle signs not always captured by call algorithms and the need to reassess triage information for people with communication difficulties.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The LeDeR programme is a service improvement initiative, not a research study, and local interpretation of reviews is common, so information collected may differ between reviews. The sample was selected for prioritised review and is not all deaths notified to LeDeR, so it cannot estimate death rates or prove why people died. Many subgroup numbers are small, and regional differences and deaths from specific genetic causes such as Down's syndrome were not reported. Deaths were reviewed during heavy pressure on health and care services, which may have affected review quality or completeness. Testing for COVID-19 was not widely available in community settings in spring 2020, so some deaths were included as suspected rather than confirmed. Shielding information was missing for 69 people, so shielding patterns cannot be read for the whole sample. The paper reports associations and care concerns, not tested treatments, so it cannot show that any intervention would have changed the outcome.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that people with intellectual disabilities never lose smell or taste. The reviews found none had reported it, and the authors say this symptom may be hard to identify because some people cannot report sensory changes verbally and behavioural responses may be difficult to interpret.