Cognitive functioning in patients with cardiovascular disease

Abstract

Aims: Aim of this study was to determine the cognitive functioning in patients with CVD. Method: The study included 118 (90 men) CVD patients treated at the Abromiskes Rehabilitation Center, aged between 41 and 70 years old (M = 57.49, SD = 7.408). Intellectual abilities were assessed by the short version of the Intelligence Structure Test I-S-T 2000 R. Results: The verbal (p<0.01), mathematical (p<0.01), visual (p<0.001) and general intelligence (p<0.001) of the CVD patients were lower than those of their peers in the Lithuanian standardized sample. When age was taken into account, these differences only persisted in the older sample (over 51 years). Younger patients (41-50 years old) do not differ in intelligence level from their healthy peers (p>0.05). Analysis of the number of correct answers in the subscales of the intelligence test items confirmed that younger participants correctly answered the same number of intelligence test subscales (except Cubes) as their healthy peers (p>0.05), while older participants correctly answered statistically fewer (p<0.05) intelligence test subscales (except Comparison) than their healthy peers. Discussion - Conclusions: The difference is found to be more pronounced in the group aged 51 years and over, while the intellectual ability of those aged 50 years and younger do not differ from that of the standardized sample. Because younger individuals have a shorter disease duration, it is likely that the impact of the disease on intellectual functioning is also lower. On the other hand, methodological limitations of the study may also have prevented to detect the differences.