Long-term cognitive outcomes after surgery and anesthesia: what we find depends on where we look

To review how anecdote and narrative medicine, primary cohort studies, epidemiological studies, and the dementia literature can be bridged to understand long-term postoperative cognitive decline.

Primary cohort studies have measured recoverable declines in memory and executive function after major surgery, but less-appreciated sources also offer critical insights. Anecdote reveals that functionally-impactful cognitive decline may persist after physical recovery in some patients despite modern medications and monitoring, and that physicians are unprepared to address patients' cognitive concerns. However, epidemiological studies reproducibly demonstrate that elective surgery has no, or a negligible, average impact on cognition in older patients. Cognitively provocative factors - like medical hospital admissions or health factors like diabetes and smoking - are common in late life, and surgery likely contributes minimally to long-term cognitive change for most patients.

Patients should be reassured that, while anecdotes of durable cognitive change after surgery are easily accessible, most patients experience cognitive recovery after major surgery. However, those who do not recover deserve characterization of their symptoms and investigation of modifiable causes to facilitate cognitive recovery.