ArticleJournal of the American Geriatrics Society2021
Association Between Exposure to General Versus Regional Anesthesia and Risk of Dementia in Older Adults.
Article in Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 23 citations in OpenAlex.
- Comparison of regional vs. general anesthesia on the risk of dementia: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Frontiers in public health · 2024Pooled it
- Age-Related Differences in Clinical Outcomes of Patients with Pleural Empyema: A Retrospective Single-Center Study.Geriatrics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- The Risk of Dementia after Anesthesia Differs according to the Mode of Anesthesia and Individual Anesthetic Agent.Clinical psychopharmacology and neuroscience : the official scientific journal of the Korean College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2025Article
- Correlation of Neuroinflammation and Therapeutic Targets in Perioperative Neurocognitive Disorders.Current pharmaceutical biotechnology · 2025Review
- Association between surgery and rate of incident dementia in older adults: A population-based retrospective cohort study.Journal of the American Geriatrics Society · 2024Article
- The Postoperative Effects of Anesthesia Exposure on Cognitive Decline in Older Adults: A Narrative Review.Current Alzheimer research · 2024Review
- Dementia risk after major elective surgery based on the route of anaesthesia: A propensity score-matched population-based cohort study.EClinicalMedicine · 2023Article
- Extended anesthesia exposure for abdominal and pelvic procedures in older adults with colorectal cancer: Associations with chart dementia diagnoses.Experimental gerontology · 2022Article
- Risk of Dementia According to Surgery Type: A Nationwide Cohort Study.Journal of personalized medicine · 2022Article
- Longitudinal Study of the Association between General Anesthesia and Increased Risk of Developing Dementia.Journal of personalized medicine · 2021Article
- Prevention of postoperative delirium through the avoidance of potentially inappropriate medications in a geriatric surgical patient.BMJ case reports · 2021Article
- A synthetic peptide rescues rat cortical neurons from anesthetic-induced cell death, perturbation of growth and synaptic assembly.Scientific reports · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
9 authors at 7 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
BACKGROUND/
objectivesCognitive changes are commonly observed in older adults following surgical procedures. There are concerns that exposure to general anesthesia (GA) may contribute to an increased risk of Alzheimer's disease. Our study examined the associations between exposure to GA compared with regional anesthesia (RA) administered for elective surgical procedures and the development of dementia.
designPopulation-based propensity matched retrospective cohort study.
settingLinked administrative databases were accessed from ICES (formerly called the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Services) in Ontario, Canada.
participantsWe included all community-dwelling individuals aged 66 and older who underwent one of five elective surgical procedures in Ontario, Canada, between April 1, 2007, and March 31, 2011. Individuals with evidence of dementia preceding cohort entry were excluded. Individuals who received GA were matched within surgical procedures to those who received RA on age, sex, cohort entry year, and a propensity score to control for potential confounders. MEASUREMENTS: The baseline characteristics of the study sample were compared before and after matching. Individuals were followed for up to 5 years following cohort entry for the occurrence of dementia using a validated algorithm. Cox proportional hazards analysis was used to determine the hazard ratio (HR) and 95% confidence interval (CI) for the association between anesthetic type and dementia. Subgroup and sensitivity analyses were undertaken.
resultsA total of 7,499 matched pairs were included in the final analysis. Overall, no difference was observed in the risk of being diagnosed with dementia for individuals who received GA when compared with RA (HR = 1.0; 95% CI = .8-1.2). There was also no association between anesthesia and dementia in most subgroup and sensitivity analyses.
conclusionElective surgery using GA was not associated with an overall elevated risk of dementia when compared with RA. Future studies are required to determine whether surgery is a risk factor for dementia irrespective of anesthetic technique.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.