Cognitive Citizenship: Access to Hip Surgery for People with Dementia

Abstract

Dementia and chronic hip disease are both more prevalent with advancing age. Given this, the number of people with both dementia and hip disease is likely to increase in an ageing population such as the UK. This article raises questions about how people with dementia and chronic hip disease are conceptualized in the context of evidence-based medicine, and whether this conceptualization may limit unfairly their access to surgical services. The published clinical research discourse at the interface of hip disease and dementia is taken as an ‘evidence-base’, and is evaluated in terms of its suitability for informing professional decisions about viability for surgery. The analysis suggests that the outcomes criteria used to determine patient viability serve to discriminate unfairly against people with dementia. If such discrimination exists, it necessarily militates against the promotion of health-related citizenship rights of the cognitively impaired, creating an evidence-based culture that encourages a problematic model of cognitive citizenship.