General Anesthesia Linked to Increased Risk of Dementia in Elderly
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Pixland/Thinkstock(BARCELONA, Spain) — A new study shows that use of general anesthesia could affect elderly patients long after surgical procedures.
General anesthesia is administered to make a patient unconscious and unable to feel pain during medical procedures. Doctors commonly use a combination of intravenous drugs and inhaled gases to get the job done.
But with this procedure, elderly patients commonly develop what is called post-operative cognitive dysfunction, or POCD, after major surgery.
Now experts wonder whether POCD can be a precursor of lasting dementia.
Researchers at the University of Bordeaux in France followed more than 7,000 patients without dementia whose average age was 75, and examined them at intervals over 10 years.
They found that 22.3 percent of those with a history of general anesthesia developed dementia — versus 18.7 percent of those with no such history. That’s an increased risk of 35 percent.
The authors acknowledge that it is also possible that other health conditions contributed to the increased dementia risk.
This study’s findings were presented at the European Society of Anaesthesiology’s annual meeting in Barcelona, Spain.
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