Having a senior moment? Memory lapses? Anesthetics may be to blame

You meet a good friend in the mall and you suddenly forget her name.

You try to call out to your youngest child but you end up enumerating all the names of your four-plus children before finally getting to the right name.

You search the entire house for your car keys and you find them still stuck in the ignition.

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Skeptical doctors

These things happen to all of us at one time or another and we often blame it on the anesthesia we've had from childbirth or surgery.

Ask any doctor if this is true and they will just laugh and say that memory loss is part of the aging process and not at all related to the number of times you have gone under the knife.

Well, it seems that there is new evidence to support women's belief that anesthetics may increase the risk of memory loss.

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Dementia

At the Taipei Veterans General Hospital, 135,873 patients aged 50 years old and older were given anesthesia for the first time in their lives and were observed for dementia.

Dementia is the loss of mental functions such as thinking, memory and reasoning severe enough to interfere with a person's daily functioning. In our culture, it may be described as "uliyanin."

Almost 5% of adults older than 65 years old will suffer from this disabling disease. If one is lucky enough to reach the age of 80, that person has a 50% chance of not recognizing the people around her or even forgetting her own name.

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Higher memory loss in anesthetized patients

In this study, the patients who were anesthetized had a 3% incidence of memory loss compared to only 1% in the group who did not receive any anesthesia.

Dr. Jong Ling Fuh, the primary author, concludes, "Although anesthesia and surgery have provided immeasurable health and social benefits, our observations in this piece of research highlight the need for further studies to understand the association between anesthesia and subsequent dementia."

SOURCE: http://ph.she.yahoo.com/having-a-senior-moment--memory-lapses--anesthetics-may-be-to-blame-083036893.html