Alzheimer's Like Symptoms After Leaving the Hospital
As medical care is improving patients are surviving critical illness more often; but, if they are surviving their critical illness with disabling forms of cognitive impairment like Alzheimer's something has to be done.
+Alzheimer's Reading Room
Patients treated in intensive care with no evidence of cognitive impairment often leave with deficits similar to those like mild Alzheimer’s disease (AD).
These symptoms or deficits often persist for at least a year, according to a Vanderbilt University Medical Center study published today in the New England Journal of Medicine.
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The Gist
The study, led by members of Vanderbilt’s ICU Delirium and Cognitive Impairment Group, found that 74 percent of the 821 patients studied, all adults with respiratory failure, cardiogenic shock or septic shock, developed delirium while in the hospital.
The authors found this to be a predictor of a dementia-like brain disease even a year after discharge from the ICU.
The Findings
Delirium, a form of acute brain dysfunction common during critical illness, has consistently been shown to be associated with higher mortality.
This large study of medical and surgical ICU patients demonstrates that it is also associated with long-term cognitive impairment in ICU survivors as well.
At three months, 40 percent of patients in the study had global cognition scores similar to patients with moderate TBI, and 26 percent scored similar to p...
Source: Alzheimer's Reading Room, The - Category: Dementia Authors: Bob DeMarco Source Type: blogs
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