Background: Vascular dementia is a syndrome of chronic progressive nature, characterized by a disturbance of various higher mental functions, which leads to an overall deterioration in the behavioral, social, emotional and biological areas of the individual. Objective: explain and describe the most current and relevant issues in dementia, vascular type specifically, and its association with late-onset depression, pathophysiological mechanisms, the impact they represent on the functionality of the elderly patient and the most prominent points in the screening and diagnosis of both entities. Methods: A systematic review of the literature on vascular dementia and its association with late-onset depression in PubMed and ScienceDirect data was performed. Results: 64 updated articles with information about the subject to develop were found. Highlights the clear association between the two conditions described, with an overall prevalence of depressive disorders of 27.41%, of which 44.41% were subjects with vascular dementia, 32.48% correspond to other types of non-specified dementia and 18.53% to Alzheimer’s disease. Conclusion: Vascular dementia is an entity that has increased morbidity in the geriatric population, because of this, the systematic application of reproducible, economical and reliable screening methods becomes more necessary, with the aim of favoring early diagnosis and detection, in our opinion such screening methods should include depressive disorders as part of their diagnostic criteria, due to the relationship between its aparittion in the later stages of life and the subsequent development of cognitive impairment and vascular dementia. (MED. UIS.2014;27(2):51-58)