Increasing Preoperative Cognitive Reserve to Prevent Postoperative Cognitive Dysfunction in Cardiac Surgical Patients

The planned research project is a monocentric, 2-arm randomized controlled intervention study involving 100 patients undergoing elective cardiac surgery with extracorporeal circulation. Patients will be assigned to a training group or control group. The intervention involves a standardized, paper-and-pencil-based cognitive training that will be performed by the patients at home for approximately 40 minutes per day over a preoperative period of 2-3 weeks. The control group will receive neither cognitive training nor a placebo intervention. A detailed assessment of psychological functions will be performed approximately 2-3 weeks before the start of training, at the end of the training, during hospitalization, at discharge from the acute clinic, and 3 months after surgery. The primary objective of this study is to investigate the interventional effect of preoperative cognitive training on the incidence of POD during the stay in the acute clinic, the incidence of POCD at the time of discharge from the acute clinic, and 3 months after surgery. Secondary objectives are to determine the training effect on objective cognitive functions before the surgery and subjective cognitive functions, as well as health-related quality of life 3 months after surgery.