Dementia After Sepsis

The elderly, sepsis, and dementia

When older people start to become forgetful or unable to manage their affairs, often our first thoughts turn to Alzheimer’s disease. However, there are many reasons why a person can develop dementia, Alzheimer’s disease being only one of them.

In October 2010, a study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) that looked at the rate of cognitive impairment (dementia) in people who were on average about 77 years old. To do this, they looked at 516 patients who had survived sepsis and the researchers compared them to 4,517 people who had been hospitalized around the same time but for other illnesses that did not include sepsis.

What the researchers found was that sepsis survivors had a higher rate of worsening function – both mentally and physically. In fact, while only 6% of people who had not had sepsis developed dementia, almost 17% of sepsis survivors did.

According to an article published on MedicineNet.com, lead study researcher Theodore J. Iwashyna, MD, PhD, of the University of Michigan Medical School, said, "Among people with no mental or physical limitations before sepsis, around 40% could not walk without assistance in the years after."

This type of research is vital. It is important for people who have had sepsis to know that what they may be feeling or experiencing may be a result of their fight with the often fatal disease.

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