Sensitivity analysis

To test how the changes in different factors affected the economic burden of care for people with dementia in China, we conducted a sensitivity analysis and proceeded with the estimation by modifying the following parameters: (i) We assumed the percentage of undetected dementia to be 73.1% instead of 92.1%, which would directly affect the proportion of patients receiving direct medical services, including transportation and special equipment [5]; (ii) we assumed that the fees attributed to medical services would present an annual growth trend of 5% [6]; (iii) we assumed the proportions of recipients of formal and informal caregiving to be 4.9% and 86.0% rather than 7.6% and 30.2% [6]; (iv) when using the opportunity cost method, we valued the hourly wages of informal caregivers based on the national mean salary, without any adjustments; (v) we estimated the cost of informal caregiving based on an average time of 6.3 hours per day instead of 15.4 [6]; (vi) we projected the total cost of care for dementia in the coming years with a discounted rate of 3% and 5% instead of 3.5%; and (vii) we adjusted the age-specific prevalence based on a systematic review [23].