Ahern S, et al. – Researchers used primary data collected from a prospective observational study of patients aged ≥ 70 years to conduct a comparative analysis of length of stay (LOS) and associated hospital costs for patients with and without a diagnosis of dementia. Findings showed that the overall LOS and total costs were not significantly different between those with and without dementia. Categorical data analysis of LOS and costs between the two groups provided mixed results. The investigators acknowledged that estimating the cost of dementia in the acute setting using LOS data from only those patients with a formal dementia diagnosis identified by routinely collected hospital discharge data may be inappropriate. They suggested that accurate disease prevalence data, including all stages of disease severity, should be considered to enable an estimation of the true cost of dementia in the acute setting based on LOS.