Vascular dementia
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Vascular dementia is a general term describing problems with reasoning, planning, judgment, memory and other thought processes caused by brain damage from impaired blood flow to your brain.
You can develop vascular dementia after a stroke blocks an artery in your brain, but strokes don’t always cause vascular dementia. Whether a stroke affects your thinking and reasoning depends on your stroke’s severity and location. Vascular dementia can also result from other conditions that damage blood vessels and reduce circulation, depriving your brain of vital oxygen and nutrients.
Factors that increase your risk of heart disease and stroke — including diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and smoking — also raise your vascular dementia risk. Controlling these factors may help lower your chances of developing vascular dementia.
Vascular dementia symptoms vary, depending on the part of your brain where blood flow is impaired. Symptoms often overlap with those of other types of dementia, especially Alzheimer’s disease dementia.
Vascular dementia signs and symptoms include:
Vascular dementia symptoms may be most clear-cut when they occur suddenly following a stroke. When changes in your thinking and reasoning seem clearly linked to a stroke, this condition is sometimes called post-stroke dementia.
Sometimes a characteristic pattern of vascular dementia symptoms follows a series of strokes or ministrokes. Changes in your thought processes occur in noticeable steps downward from your previous level of function, unlike the gradual, steady decline that typically occurs in Alzheimer’s disease dementia.
But vascular dementia can also develop very gradually, just like Alzheimer’s disease dementia. What’s more, vascular disease and Alzheimer’s disease often occur together.
Studies show that many people with dementia and evidence of brain vascular disease also have Alzheimer’s disease.
Vascular dementia results from conditions that damage your brain’s blood vessels, reducing their ability to supply your brain with the amounts of nutrition and oxygen it needs to perform thought processes effectively.
Common conditions that may lead to vascular dementia include:
Stroke (infarction) blocking a brain artery. Strokes that block a brain artery usually cause a range of symptoms that may include vascular dementia. But some strokes don’t cause any noticeable symptoms. These silent strokes still increase dementia risk.
With both silent and apparent strokes, the risk of vascular dementia increases with the number of strokes that occur over time. One type of vascular dementia involving many strokes is called multi-infarct dementia.
In general, the risk factors for vascular dementia are the same as those for heart disease and stroke. Risk factors for vascular dementia include:
The health of your brain’s blood vessels is closely linked to your overall heart health. Taking these steps to keep your heart healthy may also help reduce your risk of vascular dementia:
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Vascular dementia
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