Apart from the common stroke symptoms like body paralysis or loss of sensation, there are others including decline in “cognitive” mental functions of memory, speech, language, thinking, organization, reasoning or judgment. If these symptoms severely affect the patient’s life, it is called vascular dementia as it is stroke related.

The prevalence rate of dementia is 9 times higher in patients who had a stroke than in people who didn’t. One year after a stroke, 25% of patients develop new-onset dementia. Within 4 years following a stroke, the relative risk of incident dementia is 5.5%.

Onset can be gradual or dramatic. Regardless of the rate of appearance, vascular dementia typically progresses in a stepwise fashion, where lapses in memory and reasoning abilities are followed by periods of stability.

Prevention
The underlying vascular disease has to be recognized and treated at early stage. The immediate cause of vascular dementia is stroke-interruptions in blood flow to the brain. So the best way to prevent it is to lower the risk of stroke, being high blood pressure or hypertension the single most important one. Other important risk factors are cigarette smoking, untreated diabetes, high cholesterol, a family history of heart problems, disease in arteries elsewhere in the body, and heart rhythm abnormalities.

Hence, not smoking, avoiding an excessive alcohol intake, a healthy diet and regular exercise will all lessen the risk of stroke.

Treatment
If the patient has been diagnosed with vascular dementia, the most important thing to do would be to minimize the likelihood of additional strokes occurring, causing the dementia to worsen.

To reduce symptoms of dementia, doctors may change or stop medications that can cause confusion, such as sedatives, antihistamines, strong painkillers, and others. Some patients treated for additional medical conditions such as heart failure, thyroid disorders, anemia, or infections, can increase confusion making it harder to reduce symptoms of dementia.

Doctors may prescribe aspirin, warfarin, or other drugs to prevent clots in small blood vessels. Medications also can help relieve restlessness or depression or to sleep better, thus alleviating symptoms.

Very rarely, a surgery can be useful if there is a significant narrowing in the carotid artery. Vascular dementia, unlike Alzhemier’s disease, does not always mean a permanent and unavoidable decline.

Sources:
Memory Loss & the brain Website
Alzheimer Scotland – Action on Dementia
North West Dementia Centre