Prevention
Early detection and accurate diagnosis are important, as vascular dementia is at least partially preventable. Ischemic changes in the brain are irreversible, but the patient with vascular dementia can demonstrate periods of stability or even mild improvement. Since stroke is an essential part of vascular dementia, the goal is to prevent new strokes. This is attempted through reduction of stroke risk factors, such as high blood pressure, high blood lipid levels, atrial fibrillation, or diabetes mellitus. Meta-analyses have found that medications for high blood pressure are effective at prevention of pre-stroke dementia, which means that high blood pressure treatment should be started early. These medications include angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors, diuretics, calcium channel blockers, sympathetic nerve inhibitors, angiotensin II receptor antagonists or adrenergic antagonists. Elevated lipid levels, including HDL, were found to increase risk of vascular dementia. However, six large recent reviews showed that therapy with statin drugs was ineffective in treatment or prevention of this dementia. Aspirin is a medication that is commonly prescribed for prevention of strokes and heart attacks; it is also frequently given to patients with dementia. However, its efficacy in slowing progression of dementia or improving cognition has not been supported by studies. Smoking cessation and Mediterranean diet have not been found to help patients with cognitive impairment; physical activity was consistently the most effective method of preventing cognitive decline. Treatment
Currently, there are no medications that have been approved specifically for prevention or treatment of vascular dementia.
and H.M, who have medial temporal damage and anterograde amnesia, still have perceptual priming. Priming was accomplished in many different experiments of amnesia, and it was found that the patients can be primed; they have no conscious recall of the event, but the response is there. Those patients did well in the word fragment completion task. There is some evidence that non-declarative memory can be held onto in the form of motor skills. This idea was disputed, though, because it is argued that motor skills require both declarative and non-declarative information. Causes
There are three generalized categories in which amnesia could be acquired by a person. The three categories are head trauma (example: head injuries), traumatic events (example: seeing something devastating to the mind), or physical deficiencies (example: atrophy of the hippocampus). The majority of amnesia and related memory issues derive from the first two categories as these are more common and the third could be considered a subcategory of the first. Head trauma is a very broad range as it deals with any kind of injury or active action toward the brain which might cause amnesia. Retrograde and anterograde amnesia is more often seen from events like this, an exact example of a cause of the two would be electroconvulsive therapy, which would cause both briefly for the receiving patient. Traumatic events are more subjective. What is traumatic is dependent on what the person finds to be traumatic.