Martinić-Popović Irena, Lovrenčić-Huzjan Arijana, Demarin Vida
University Department of Neurology, Sestre Milosrdnice University Hospital Center, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia.
Stroke Res Treat. 2012;2012:981416. doi: 10.1155/2012/981416. Epub 2012 Feb 28.
Advanced carotid disease is known to be associated with symptomatic cerebrovascular diseases, such as stroke or transient ischemic attack (TIA), as well as with poststroke cognitive impairment. However, cognitive decline often occurs in patients with advanced carotid stenosis without clinically evident stroke or TIA, so it is also suspected to be an independent risk factor for dementia. Neurosonological methods enable simple and noninvasive assessment of carotid stenosis in patients at risk of advanced atherosclerosis. Cognitive status in patients diagnosed with advanced carotid stenosis is routinely not taken into consideration, although if cognitive impairment is present, such patients should probably be called symptomatic. In this paper, we discuss results of some most important studies that investigated cognitive status of patients with asymptomatic advanced carotid disease and possible mechanisms involved in the causal relationship between asymptomatic advanced carotid disease and cognitive decline.
已知重度颈动脉疾病与有症状的脑血管疾病相关，如中风或短暂性脑缺血发作（TIA），以及与中风后认知障碍相关。然而，认知功能下降经常发生在患有重度颈动脉狭窄但无临床明显中风或TIA的患者中，因此它也被怀疑是痴呆的一个独立危险因素。神经超声检查方法能够对有重度动脉粥样硬化风险的患者进行简单且无创的颈动脉狭窄评估。尽管如果存在认知障碍，这类患者可能应被视为有症状，但在诊断为重度颈动脉狭窄的患者中，认知状态通常未被纳入考虑。在本文中，我们讨论了一些最重要的研究结果，这些研究调查了无症状重度颈动脉疾病患者的认知状态，以及无症状重度颈动脉疾病与认知功能下降之间因果关系中可能涉及的机制。
