Title: Heart failure and Dementia: Cardiogenic dementia

Biography:

Abstract

Heart failure and Dementia: Cardiogenic dementia

Dementia and heart failure both represent growing social, healthcare and economic problems. The most common form of dementia is Alzheimer′s disease, and the major risk factor for its development is increasing age. Other known risk factors include family history, hypertension and hypotension, high cholesterol levels, low levels of physical activity and of education, obesity, genetics and recently heart failure. Decreased cerebral blood flow and neurohormonal activation due to heart failure may contribute to the dysfunction of the neurovascular unit and cause an energy crisis in neurons. The impaired clearance of amyloid beta and hyperphosphorylation of tau protein, results in the formation of amyloid beta plaques and neurofibrillary tangles. An interdisciplinary approach towards elderly patients is needed. Better understanding of such newly understood relationships may result in benefit for elderly patients from appropriate evidence-based treatment. Neuro-cardiology field helps integrates medical knowledge of interactions between chronic degenerative and cardiovascular diseases and applies this knowledge in clinical practice.