No Link Between Anesthesia and Dementia (however.....)

Medscape

 Exposure to general anesthesia during medical procedures after age 45 years is not a risk factor for dementia, results of a new study suggest.
The lack of association between anesthesia and dementia was also quite robust in several of the study's sensitivity analyses exploring factors such as the timing of anesthetic exposure before the dementia diagnosis and the age at the time of anesthetic exposure, researchers report.
"The message from this paper is very simple: Anesthesia is not a risk for dementia," said one of the study authors David S. Knopman, MD, Department of Neurology, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota.
However, the study does not settle the controversy surrounding the concept of postoperative cognitive decline (POCD), the researchers caution.
The retrospective, population-based, nested case-control study was published online May 3 in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings.....