The 3-year course and outcome of patients with major depression and silent cerebral infarction.

ABSTRACT

We retrospectively investigated the relationship between major depression and silent cerebral infarction (SCI) over a 3-year period in 64 patients older than 50 years of age with unipolar depression. All patients underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) at their first admission for depression and were classified into groups based on the presence or absence of SCI. The number of admissions due to depression was greater in the SCI (+) group (N = 32) than in the SCI (-) group (N = 32) (P < 0.05). The incidences of delirium and neurological disorders were significantly higher in the SCI (+) group than in the SCI (-) group. Our findings suggest that patients with depression and SCI had a higher rate of hospitalization and were more likely to develop psychiatric and neurological disorders than patients with depression without SCI.