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EntityQ583908· pop 32· linked from 574 articles

vascular dementia

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Also known as multifocal dementia, Dementia, Vascular, Dementia due to cerebrovascular disease, Vascular cognitive impairment

dementia that involves impairments in cognitive function caused by problems in blood vessels that feed the brain

Key facts

Other names
Dementia due to cerebrovascular disease; , Vascular cognitive impairment
Specialty
Psychiatry , neurology
Symptoms
Cognitive impairment , Short-term memory loss
Complications
Heart disease , loss of ability to care for self and interact , pneumonia
Causes
Conditions that impair blood vessels in the brain and therefore interfere with oxygen delivery to the brain
Risk factors
High blood pressure , high cholesterol , atrial fibrillation , diabetes
Diagnostic method
Lab test, neuroimaging test, neuropsychological testing
Differential diagnosis
Alzheimer's disease
Treatment
Symptomatic
Frequency
15–30% of dementia cases in the United States, Europe, and Asia

via Wikipedia infobox

Research

22,439 papers

via PubMed

Wikidata facts

Subclass of
disease
Image
Vascular dementia.jpg
Show 13 more facts
Commons category
Vascular dementia
NCI Thesaurus ID
C34525
health specialty
neurology
ICD-9-CM
290.4
drug or therapy used for treatment
vinpocetine
has phenotype
dementia
symptoms and signs
dementia
prevalence
0.016
has cause
diabetes
medical examination
psychological test
possible treatment
statin
on focus list of Wikimedia project
WikiProject Medicine
Sources (8)

via Wikidata · CC0

~13 min read

Encyclopedic overview

Vascular dementia is dementia caused by a series of strokes. Restricted blood flow due to strokes reduces oxygen and glucose delivery to the brain, causing cell injury and neurological deficits in the affected region. Subtypes of vascular dementia include subcortical vascular dementia, multi-infarct dementia, stroke-related dementia, and mixed dementia.

Subcortical vascular dementia occurs from damage to small blood vessels in the brain. Multi-infarct dementia results from a series of small strokes affecting several brain regions. Stroke-related dementia involving successive small strokes causes a more gradual decline in cognition. Dementia may occur when neurodegenerative and cerebrovascular pathologies are mixed, as in susceptible elderly people (75 years and older). Cognitive decline can be traced back to occurrence of successive strokes.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “vascular dementia” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.