My husband was diagnosed with vascular dementia 2 years ago. About the same time he was diagnosed with PTSD. He had to be life flighted to the hospital due to heart attack and in the process of being in the helicopter, it took him back to when he was in Viet-Nam. Could there be a connection and what is the of life expectency?
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Q: could vascular dementia and Army PTSD have a connection?
Answers (3)
4/23/09 1:14pm
Hi, Doodles,
Thank you for your questions. From my experience, people with dementia can mentally put themselves into a situation they were in earlier in their life. For instance, my mom (who had Alzheimer's) thought she was working in the fabric store that she used to co-own with my father when, in fact, she was in the nursing home corridors.
Also, from what I've read, longevity with vascular dementia depends on the person's age and other medical conditions that he or she has. So I'd suggest talking to your husband's doctor to get a good estimate.
Take care and keep us posted!
Doiran
4/30/09 1:02pm
6/26/09 11:40pm
There is also recent research that shows that the hippocampus, part of your body's limbic system, is shown to be affected by the events that lead to PTSD (and the subsequent episodes or reliving of events that may happen). PTSD patients and patients who have had highly traumatic life events like molestations as a child are being found to have reduced nervous cell tissue here - up to 18% based on one studyby Alexander Neumeister on neurocircuitry and neuroplasticity in PTSD. They believe this to be a result of an overproduction of a neurotransmitter that damages the dendrites of nervous cells. This portion of the brain is also directly linked to alzheimers. There isn't much data out there to date that link the two (as far as I know) - but it would seem that the connection is likely.
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By doodles— Last Modified: 12/18/10, First Published: 04/23/09
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correction: a mispelled word..."in" should read "if."
A possible connection is undiagnosed Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA). There is an increased incidence of OSA in PTSD and, in my opinion, OSA is a cause, if not the major cause, of vascular dementia. A sleep study can diagnose it and a PAP machine will treat it.