Vascular Dementia

Original Editor - Lucinda hampton

Top Contributors - Lucinda hampton and Kim Jackson  

Introduction

Vascular dementia, otherwise known as vascular cognitive impairment, is the most common frequent cause of dementia after Alzheimers disease (approximately 15% to 17% of all forms of dementia). It usually occurs in patients with atherosclerosis and chronic hypertension that over time cause multiple white matter lesions or cortical infarcts. Patients with vascular dementia have a shortened life expectancy.

Epidemiology

Incidence is hard to discover but is strongly matched with age, occurring in 1% of patients greater than 55 years and in greater than 4% of patients over 71 years. To add to this uncertainty Alzheimer disease often co-occurs with vascular dementia. Also accelerated vascular changes occur in some people due to specific underlying disease not shown on vascular dementia studies. Risk factors for the development of vascular dementia include hyperlipidemia, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, and tobacco use.

Prevention

Vascular dementia can be prevented by treating the risk factors eg. diabetes, hypertension, smoking, and hyperlipidemia, with blood pressure control being critical. Mant studies proving that using antihypertensive medications reduces the risk of vascular dementia.

Management

Dementias have no single treatments, with the focus being on treating individual risk factors (e.g. hypertension, smoking, hypercoagulation, atherosclerosis).

For more information see Dementia

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