The Gerontologist, Vol 35, Issue 1 103-111, Copyright © 1995 by The Gerontological Society of America

REVIEWS

Evaluating Alzheimer's special care units: reviewing the evidence and identifying potential sources of study bias

PD Sloane, DA Lindeman, C Phillips, DJ Moritz and G Koch
Department of Family Medicine, School of Medicine, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill 27599-7595.

Special Care Units (SCUs) for Alzheimer's disease have been proliferating in long-term care, but their effectiveness remains unproven. This review summarizes the published studies, presents and discusses the many potential sources of bias that pose special problems for SCU research, and proposes strategies for conducting and interpreting future outcome studies in this difficult research setting.

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