OBJECTIVES To determine prevalence of delirium in critically ill children and explore associated risk factors. DESIGN Multi-institutional point prevalence study. SETTING Twenty-five pediatric critical care units in the United States, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Australia, and Saudi Arabia. PATIENTS All children admitted to the pediatric critical care units on designated study days (n = ...

INTRODUCTION Subsyndromal delirium (SSD) complicates diagnosis of delirium and dementia, although there is little research comparing their symptom profiles. METHODS Cross-sectional study of 400 elderly patients' admission to a general hospital or nursing home diagnosed with delirium, SSD, dementia, or no-delirium/no-dementia (NDND). Symptom profiles were assessed using the Delirium Rating Sca...

INTRODUCTION Delirium is an acute disturbance of consciousness and cognition. It is a common disorder in the intensive care unit (ICU) and associated with impaired long-term outcome. Despite its frequency and impact, delirium is poorly recognized by ICU-physicians and -nurses using delirium screening tools. A completely new approach to detect delirium is to use monitoring of physiological alter...

BACKGROUND Delirium is a frequent and detrimental complication of inpatient hospitalization. Multicomponent intervention in selected groups has been shown to prevent and treat delirium, though little data exists on the effect of intervention in neurological patients. We studied the efficacy of a multicomponent delirium care pathway implemented on a largely neurology and neurosurgery hospital wa...

DELIRIUM, defined as an acute decline of attention and cognitive function, represents a common and potentially devastating problem for hospitalized older persons. With occurrence rates from 14% to 56% and hospital mortality rates from 25% to 33% (1), delirium often initiates a cascade of events culminating in loss of independence, increased morbidity and mortality, and increased health care cos...

OBJECTIVE To study caregivers' perceptions about the cause of delirium and their distress caused by symptoms of delirium. METHOD Adult caregivers of patients with delirium, who gave consent, were asked about their perceptions of the cause of delirium. Patients were assessed for delirium by using the delirium rating scale-revised version (DRS-R-98). RESULTS The study included 72 primary care...

OBJECTIVE Exaggerated central nervous system (CNS) inflammatory responses to peripheral stressors may be implicated in delirium. This study hypothesised that the IL-1β family is involved in delirium, predicting increased levels of interleukin-1β (IL-1β) and decreased IL-1 receptor antagonist (IL-1ra) in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) of elderly patients with acute hip fracture. We also hypothesi...

11–42% of general medical in-patients, with even higher rates in older patients, those with pre-existing cognitive impairment, terminal illness or receiving care in intensive care units. Although delirium is classically described as a syndrome with high inherent reversibility, studies have increasingly highlighted that persistence is a common occurrence in older people. Despite its relatively h...

BACKGROUND reliable delirium risk stratification will aid recognition, anticipation and prevention and will facilitate targeting of resources in clinical practice as well as identification of at-risk patients for research. Delirium risk scores have been derived for acute medicine, but none has been prospectively validated in external cohorts. We therefore aimed to determine the reliability of e...

CONTEXT In end-of-life care, delirium is often not recognized and poses unique management challenges, especially in the case of refractory delirium in the terminal phase. OBJECTIVES To review delirium in the terminal phase context, specifically in relation to recognition issues; the decision-making processes and management strategies regarding its reversibility; the potential refractoriness o...