The Onset and Symptoms of Vascular Dementia

5. Single-Infarct and Multi-Infarct Vascular Dementia

If a person has many small strokes — mini-strokes, or transient ischemic attacks — the person may not notice any problem. The symptoms may only last a few minutes because the blockage in the blood vessel clears itself. Too many mini-strokes can, however, lead to the death of some brain tissue, causing infarction. If this occurs in an essential part of the brain, single-infarct dementia may follow. Often, this results from many small strokes over several weeks or months, which causes multiple infarcts and more widespread damage, leading to multi-infarct dementia.