Disability and life lost

Dementia shortens lives and reduces the quality of life of people with the condition. These impacts are difficult to measure and quantify but the following tools are used to estimate the effects and enable comparisons across different disease areas:

• Years of life lost (YLL) is the number of years a disease will reduce average life expectancy by.
• Years lost due to a disability (YLD) are the number of years with a lower quality of life due to the disease. These YLDs are weighted to reflect the extent of the reduction in quality of life across different diseases.
• Disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) for a disease or health condition are calculated as the sum of the Years of Life Lost (YLL) due to premature mortality in the population and the Years Lost due to Disability (YLD) for people living with the health condition or its consequences.  One DALY can be thought of as one lost year of “healthy” life.

For more information on these measure, see the World Health Organisation website.

Page last reviewed: 05/07/2018

Source: World Health Organisation Global Burden of Disease Study

Source: World Health Organisation Global Burden of Disease Study

Source: World Health Organisation Global Burden of Disease Study

Source: World Health Organisation Global Burden of Disease Study

Source: World Health Organisation Global Burden of Disease Study

Source: World Health Organisation Global Burden of Disease Study