As shared by Dr Kaushal Chhatrapati, MD DM, FACC FSCAI FESC, interventional cardiologist, a new study published in JAMA Neurology examined the link between heart attacks and cognitive decline. More than 30,000 patients were studied in this meta-analysis from 1971 to 2019. 

Cognitive decline refers to a fall in an individual's ability to remember facts and perform simple learned tasks efficiently. Stroke and Alzheimer’s disease are common causes of dementia in the elderly. However, many survivors of heart attacks had neither of these diseases and yet demonstrated intellectual decline around six years after the heart attacks. Evidently, some other factors are at play here.