Vascular dementia

Abstract:

Dementia is a growing problem of modern society due to the increased age of the population. Dementia is defined as a neurological disorder, consisting of cognition disorders severe enough to disrupt daily function of patients. The incidence and prevalence of dementia increases with the aging population. Vascular dementia is the most common form of dementia in the elderly, right after Alzheimer’s dementia. The term vascular dementia identifies patients with severe cognitive dysfunction due to cerebrovascular disease after ischemic or hemorrhagic stroke, lacunar and microscopic cortical infarction, or due to heart and circulatory diseases caused by infarcts in the white matter. Mild cognitive impairment is considered to be the earliest clinical manifestation of Alzheimer’s dementia, and similar concept was proposed for vascular dementia named vascular mild cognitive impairment - VaMCI. VaMCI concept includes patients with classic vascular risk factors and certain degree of cognitive impairment but no dementia. The term vascular cognitive impairment (VCI) refers to all forms of mild to severe cognitive impairments which are associated with vascular damage, no matter if they meet the criteria for vascular dementia or not. This type of disorder includes those who have cognitive impairment associated with stroke, multiple cortical infarcts, multiple subcortical infarcts, silent infarcts, strategic infarcts, multiple small vascular lesions in the white matter and lacunar infarcts. Progression of vascular mild cognitive impairment to vascular dementia could probably be prevented with proper preventative measures and treatment of vascular risk factors. This would make vascular dementia the only type of dementia that might be prevented and treated. 

Key words:
dementia; diagnosis; epidemiology; prevention; treatment; vascular