Anesthesiology and POCD
POCD
Post Operative Cognitive Dysfunction is a general term used to define the aftermath of surgery when a patient experiences a lowered cognitive ability than before the surgery. This is often defined by a screening of Mini-Mental Tests, which are short exams taken before and periodically after surgery to examine a patient's ability in specific tasks ranging from spelling to fine motor skills that range in difficulty. Oftentimes with POCD, within the week after surgery, a patient will have a noticeable decline in crucial daily functions, such as loss of memory and difficulty with tasks such as driving or remembering directions. This can be very detrimental to patients, as if they are released from inpatient care they are expected to be functioning to the fullest however POCD can make this difficult to acheive.
This assessment is an analysis of an article that describes research on POCD. there is a large amount of valuable information within this article, including the impacts that previous conditions have on inducing POCD.
This image is a compilation of the data I have seen from every article that has rates about POCD, and it is interesting to see the almost parabola that results from age groups. While it is generally considered that older people will always have more issues with cognitive function, this graph shows that young adults have a higher percentage of POCD than those aged 40-60. While this is interesting data, it proves that more research needs to be done on POCD relating to age and how minor surgeries effect cognitive function over time.