Journal of the American Geriatrics Society Research Summary

Most people who need open heart surgery to repair damaged heart valves are aged 65 or older. The American Heart Association (AHA) estimates that nearly 8 million people have had heart surgeries. However, we don’t fully understand the effects of heart surgery on an older adult’s cognition (the ability to remember, think, and make decisions).

In 2014, an estimated 156,000 heart valve surgeries were performed in the US. The most common condition for valve surgery was aortic stenosis. The aorta is the heart valve that controls blood flow from your heart to the rest of your body. Aortic stenosis occurs when the aortic valve doesn’t allow blood to flow out of the heart properly. Adults 65 and older represent most of the people who need aortic valve surgery, and the number of older adults with aortic stenosis is expected to double by 2050.

Understanding how heart valve surgery may affect your cognition is important for older adults. To learn more, researchers reviewed studies to see how patients’ cognition changed before and after heart valve surgery. They also looked at whether surgeries on two types of heart valves, the mitral or the aortic, were associated with better or worse outcomes. Their study was published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. Continue reading →