Doctors miss memory problems in heart patients

By Ronnie Cohen NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Almost half of older heart patients in a new study had memory loss, though their cardiologists failed to recognize the impairment most of the time. “Detection of memory impairment is very important in elderly heart failure patients,” the study’s lead author, Dr. Olivier Hanon, told Reuters Health in an email. Memory loss may affect how well people with heart failure stick to their medications, said Hanon, from Broca Hospital in Paris. Their chances of dying are known to increase with their thinking and memory problems.