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Coronary Bypass Increases Risk Of Alzheimers

A study presented on July 20, 2004 at the International Conference on Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Disorders in Philadelphia says that patients undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) for blocked heart arteries run a higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease than patients undergoing the less invasive angioplasty procedure.

5000 CABG patients and 4000 angioplasty patients treated at the Hines VA Hospital in Illinois were followed for 5 years after their procedures. All of the patients were age 55 or older at the start of the study and none of them had dementia.

After 5 years, 41 of the angioplasty patients were diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. 78 of the bypass patients were similarly diagnosed.

The authors of the study theorize that stress during the bypass surgery triggers an increase in stress hormones that “may trigger a cascade of events that reduce the oxygen to the brain.”

The authors go on to suggest that increasing the supply of oxygen and glucose to the brain during surgery may help reduce the stress of surgery.

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