Spine Surgery under general anesthesia may not increase the risk of Alzheimer's disease.

BACKGROUND Volatile anesthetics cause Alzheimer's disease (AD)-like neuropathology in animals. We determined whether spine surgery under general anesthesia and anesthetic choice contributed to AD development. METHODS We searched the Clinical Data Repository of the University of Virginia for patients receiving spine surgery from January 1, 1992 to March 1, 2004. Patients with newly-diagnosed AD after the surgery but before March 1, 2009 (a minimal 5-year follow-up time after the surgery) were identified. RESULTS Among 10,161 spine surgery patients, 26 patients had new-onset AD. Univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses of the data from these 26 patients and from 161 randomly selected spine surgery patients without new-onset AD suggest that increasing age is a risk factor for new-onset AD. Gender, anesthesia/surgery time, use of volatile anesthetics versus propofol (an intravenous anesthetic) and length of hospital stay were not different between patients with and without new-onset AD. Similar results were found with the case-control study. The frequency of new-onset AD in spine surgery patients was similar to that of patients who had never had a surgery. CONCLUSION These results suggest that increasing age is a risk factor for AD in patients after spine surgery. Anesthesia/surgery may not be independent factors for AD development.