ICU Delirium and Dementia

[imoldernu]

This article from NPR held special interest for me. New information about what could happen after release from the ICU in some cases where the patient has extended periods of delirium during intensive care procedures.

When ICU Delirium Leads To Symptoms Of Dementia After Discharge

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/10/10/654445929/when-icu-delirium-leads-to-symptoms-of-dementia-after-discharge

If the link goes away, you may be able to search for it using some of the key words.

It left me wondering whether my recent hospital stays, 5 days in ICU, could have left some lingering effects. For many weeks after recovering from surgery, periods of confusion, depression and a very short temper..

Probably just coincidence, as I'm in pretty good shape now, but listening to the story really hit a nerve.

 

[DayDreaming]

Possibly related to this, you can find a lot of information about anesthesia induced dementia and POCD (post-operative cognitive dysfunction):

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/261319.php
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-general-anesthesia-trigger-dementia/

My father never seemed the same after having a minor surgical procedure done under general anesthesia.

 

[imoldernu]

Thanks for the links. Interesting that this was known back in 2013. One would think that more information would have come out, based on the studies, and the risk percent.
From one of the articles:

Elderly patients who are exposed to general anesthesia have a 35% higher risk of developing dementia, researchers from INSERM and University of Bordeaux, France, reported at Euroanaesthesia, the annual congress of the European Society of Anaesthesiology (ESA).

Particularly this comment by one of the doctors...

It is difficult to untangle the effects of anesthesia from those caused by the operation itself, however. Surgery is a traumatic experience that is known to provoke inflammation. Eckenhoff believes neuroinflammation from surgery rather than anesthesia is the true culprit in cognitive decline, which can “interact with pathology that is sort of smoldering along in somebody with incipient Alzheimer’s disease” and accelerate it, he says. “We don’t think that anesthesia and surgery actually cause Alzheimer’s or cause dementia,” he adds. “We think that it interacts with individual vulnerabilities where if you’re already predisposed to getting something like this, this speeds it up.”

My conspiracy oriented mind wonders why more studies have not been done. Imagine surgery without anaesthesia... Imagine what could happen to the elective surgery business.

I gotta stop this...

.

 

[MikeD]

Post Anesthesia confusion is what happened to me. I am not awake yet so the story will be short.

In 2007 I had a second transplanted pancreas put in me. I woke up a while later and asked for my wife. It seems that she had gone home to take care of the dog after a max of 10 hours, just like we had agreed on before the surgery. I was yelling where is my wife! I demanded a phone from the nurses and had them dial my wife which I was unable to do due to anesthesia numbness, diabetic neuropathy, and all sorts of tubes and stuff. I got my wife on the phone and started yelling at her that she had abandoned and what about the dog, etc. My poor wife had been clued in by the nurses and convinced me that I ALREADY HAD HAD MY ABDOMINAL TRANSPLANT AND I WAS IN RECOVERY. She was the only one who I would believe.

Mike D.

 

[MRG]

I'd never heard of this, thanks for posting.

I wonder if this played a piece in DFs dementia? He claimed he hid it for years but it probably was around the time of a surgery that it hit him.

I just read a Reddit post talking about a person who had surgery and participated in testing while under. It was amazing to me how many people said they felt different and had lasting memory issues after surgery.