Stroke and cognitive disorders

Abstract

Cognitive disorders (CDs) are diagnosed in most patients within the first months after stroke. Moreover, the prevalence of poststroke dementia, the most severe type of CDs, is 7-40% in relation to patient age and prior stroke severity. The major risk factors of poststroke CDs are elderly age, recurrent stroke, low education level, pronounced leukoareosis, and/or hippocampal atrophy, as evidenced by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and left-hemisphere stroke. Prestroke CDs is an important predictor of poststroke dementia that is commonly detected retrospectively during the directed interview of relatives. This fact suggests that stroke is not the only cause of CDs, but frequently decompensates or engages a physician's attention to already existing CDs. Three clinical and pathogenetic types of poststroke CDs may be identified. These include sequels of strategic infarction crucial for cognitive functions; poststroke vascular CSs associated with reinfarctions and/or leukoareosis; and mixed (vascular and degenerative) CDs caused by a decompensated latent degenerative process. Approaches to managing poststroke CDs are the same as those in CDs as a whole. The study of the preventive effect of neuroprotective agents against the development of poststroke CDs and dementia in the rehabilitative period of stroke is promising.

Keywords

• poststroke cognitive disorders
• poststroke dementia
• neuroprotectors