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ANAESTHETIC ALZHEIMERS

"BY-PASS BRAIN"

Anaesthetic Alzheimers is a tragic development after successful surgery. Almost everyone knows someone who sadly developed what was presumed to be 'Alzheimer's Disease' after surgery. Were they were about to develop the disease anyway? Specialists are now acknowledging that the very young and the elderly are particularly vulnerable to anaesthetic Alzheimers disease.

"If you do a perfect operation, and you have someone who comes out with say a perfect heart, it's just heart-wrenching if you have a neurological dysfunction."

- Dr Aubrey Galloway, Chairman of cardio-thoracic surgery: New York University School of Medicine.

The New England Journal of Medicine reports that more than half of heart by-pass patients awake with cognitive dysfunction, ranging from a stroke to memory loss.

World Congress of Anaesthesiologists

The risk of permanent harm to neonates and the elderly from anaesthetic drugs was a hot topic at the World Congress of Anaesthesiologists in Cape Town in 2008.

Professor Mike James

The University of Cape Town's medical school, department of Anaesthesia, and co-chairman of the Congress Scientific Programme, said:

“Evidence is emerging on how anaesthetic drugs might alter the functions of the brain in the very young and older patients, and that this may be permanent."

“This shows the need for more precise, better-targeted anaesthetic drugs,” said James, who is also head of the SA Society of Anaesthesiologists.

As many as 10% of older patients run the risk of permanently losing brain function after undergoing an anaesthetic and surgery.

ANAESTHETIC ALZHEIMERS. It's for real.

Professor Duncan Mitchell

Emeritus Professor Duncan Mitchell, of the University of the Witwatersrand’s Brain Function Research Group, said: “Every time you have an anaesthetic you lose neurons and since elderly people have fewer neurons, they lose proportionately more neurons.”

Typically, patients recuperate fully from the operation but sometimes their cognitive function is impaired permanently. THE OPERATION WAS A SUCCESS BUT SADLY THE PATIENT LOST HER/HIS MARBLES.

Professor Maze

“Elderly patients who go in for a hip or knee operation, for example, may be able to walk afterwards but not remember where they are walking to.”

He believes this loss in brain functioning is induced by inflammation related to the surgery rather than the anaesthetic itself. (Editor: Does it make a difference?)

An anaesthetic and surgery on patients may be the catalyst that pushes vulnerable patients over the edge into short-term memory loss or, worse still, Alzheimer's disease.

FROM THE COAL FACE

Mrs L was a favourite patient. My wife's maths teacher at high school, they had the same name, she was always one of my favourites. Now long dead, I think I say that Jean Lindsay was one of the tartars who would accept nothing but the best from her pupils, and the number of serious mathematians who went on to prove themselves could certainly not be easily numbered. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of accountants, actuaries, engineers. The good wife, Jean nee Lindsay, like her guru, is a maths teacher. To this day, the best Maths pupil at Estcourt High School receives the "Jean Lindsay" trophy, donated by the two Jean Lindsays.

But I couldn't help Mrs Lindsay's knees. She had guarded the goals for the Springbok hockey team in her prime, and her knees had taken a beating. Eventually she had a double knee replacement, done simultaneously.

Mrs L was never the same. She lost her marbles to ANAESTHETIC ALZHEIMERS. Exactly what happened no one will ever know, but a 65 year old genius, instantly became a pathetic, sad woman who could neither remember who she was, where she lived, or who her chiropractor was.

We remember you with great affection, Mrs L. One of the geniuses of your generation who gave so much to so many.

Iatrogenic illness

There is no treatment that is perfectly safe. That includes Chiropractic. Any honest chiropractor will tell you that he has had patients whose sciatic got worse, were very dizzy for a few days after the treatment, and about 1/ 2 000 000 patients will have a stroke after a cervical manipulation, making it about the safest treatment for anything on the planet but, still, it can happen.

But there is nothing that we chiropractors do that comes even remotely close to the dangers of Anaesthetic Alzheimers.

Many drugs, the so-called Anti-cholinergic drugs, also have severe side-effects. Read more … ANTICHOLINERGIC SIDE EFFECTS.

Read more … IATROGENIC ILLNESS.

Go from ANAESTHETIC ALZHEIMERS to STROKE CHIROPRACTIC.