Minimal Comfort Feeding in Advanced Dementia: Attitudes of Hospice and Palliative Care Professionals

It was a great pleasure to work with this team to continue developing end-of-life options to avoid living into late-stage dementia. Today, the Journal of Pain & Symptom Management published "Minimal Comfort Feeding in Advanced Dementia: Attitudes of Hospice and Palliative Care Professionals."

Context

Minimal Comfort Feeding (MCF) is a new approach to providing nutrition and hydration to persons with advanced dementia who have previously indicated (or whose surrogate believes) they would not want to live with advanced dementia. The acceptability of MCF has not been studied.

Objective

To assess perceptions of hospice and palliative care (HPC) professionals toward MCF.

Methods

This cross-sectional exploratory survey study of a convenience sample was conducted at a national conference of HPC professionals in February 2025. During a presentation on MCF’s definition and ethical basis, attendees engaged in audience response polling and an optional electronic survey. Descriptive results are presented.

Results

Fifty-one people attended the presentation. Forty-five attendees (88%) participated in audience polling and 22 (43%) participated in both polling and the survey. The mean age of survey respondents was 50 (standard deviation 9.58), 19 (86%) identified as White, and 18 (82%) identified as women. Thirty-five of 42 respondents (83%) agreed or strongly agreed that MCF is an acceptable option for PWAD and 93% (39/42) agreed or strongly agreed they would be comfortable discussing MCF with persons with early dementia or who are at risk for dementia as a potential future option. Sixty-nine percent (29/42) anticipated MCF would be somewhat or completely acceptable to families of PWAD, but respondents were divided regarding the ease of implementing MCF in clinical practice.

Conclusion

While MCF was highly acceptable in this study, the sample size was small and risk of bias high. Further research is needed.