The Lancet Neurology, Vol. 8 No. 11 pp 973-975

Dementia is becoming an increasingly common disorder in our ageing population and is a much more heterogeneous condition than has long been assumed. Above all neurodegenerative disorders, Alzheimer's disease and vascular disorders contribute the most to this important cause of chronic disability and share many features including in the predominant risk factor—age.1 With regard to the vascular aspect of dementia, neither the 1950s concept of chronic cerebral hypoperfusion attributed to atherosclerosis of cerebral arteries, nor the emphasis during the 1970s and 1980s on the risk of recurrent strokes causing multi-infarct dementia, reflect our current knowledge about the pathobiological complexity of dementia in general and of post-stroke dementia in particular.