THE 3-YEAR COURSE AND OUTCOME OF PATIENTS WITH MAJOR DEPRESSION AND SILENT CEREBRAL INFARCTION

We retrospectively investigated the relationship between major depress ion and silent cerebral infarction (SCI) over a 3-year period in 64 pa tients older than 50 years of age with unipolar depression. All patien ts 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 grea ter 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. O ur findings suggest that patients with depression and SCI had a higher rate of hospitalization and were more likely to develop psychiatric a nd neurological disorders than patients with depression without SCI. ( C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.