delirium Archives - Better Health While Aging

10 Things to Know About Delirium

Pop quiz: What senior health problem is extremely common, has serious implications for an older person’s health and wellbeing, and can often – but not always – be prevented?

It’s delirium, which affects about 30% of seniors during hospitalization. (Rates are much higher if there’s been a surgery or if the person is in the intensive care unit.)

People sometimes refer to delirium as “post-operative confusion,” or “ICU psychosis” or even “hospital dementia.”

Delirium is extremely important for family caregivers to learn about, because families are often the first to notice that senior isn’t himself or herself.

So I’ve written a comprehensive article for A Place for Mom, covering the definition of delirium and all the essential things you should know. You can find it here:

“Delirium vs. Dementia“

In this article, I explain:

What is delirium, including symptoms and causes,
How delirium differs from dementia,
Why delirium is such an important problem to prevent and detect in seniors.

I also cover ten important things to know — and do! — about delirium: [Read more…]

Hospital Delirium: What to know & do

by Leslie Kernisan, MD MPH 196 Comments

“How should delirium be managed in the hospital?”

This question came up during a Q & A session, as we were discussing the Choosing Wisely recommendation to avoid tying down older adults who become confused during a hospitalization. (See item 5 in this article.)

Delirium is a common and important problem for all older adults in the hospital; it doesn’t just happen to people with a dementia diagnosis!

But many family caregivers have hardly heard of hospital delirium. This is too bad, since there’s a lot that caregivers can do to prevent this serious complication, or at least prevent an older loved one from being physically restrained if delirium does occur.

In this post, I’ll review what older adults and family caregivers absolutely should know about hospital delirium. And, we’ll cover some of the things you can do if it happens to your loved one. [Read more…]

Delirium: How Caregivers Can Protect Alzheimer’s Patients

by Leslie Kernisan, MD MPH 14 Comments

This week’s Q & A call was about how to better manage health and healthcare issues, when you’re taking care of someone with a dementia such as Alzheimer’s.

Most of the caregivers’ questions were about delirium. This is the state of worse-than-usual confusion that people can develop when they are sick or under serious stress.

I love talking to Alzheimer’s caregivers about delirium, because this is a really common problem that family caregivers absolutely can do something about!

The key is to know that people with dementia are especially prone to get delirium when they fall ill (especially in the hospital). And then you’ll want to know the basics on how to spot this problem, and how to get the doctors to address it properly.

A fact I wish more caregivers of elders knew: delirium can be the only obvious sign of a potentially serious health problem, such as a heart attack, a urinary tract infection, or a pneumonia. (Especially when it comes to older people with Alzheimer’s, they often don’t voice focused complaints the way younger people do.)

The trouble is, even though delirium is very common in older adults, studies have shown that it’s often missed by doctors and nurses. This is a important problem in healthcare, for three key reasons: [Read more…]

A common problem that speeds Alzheimer’s decline, and how to avoid it

by Leslie Kernisan, MD MPH 82 Comments

Earlier this week, while I was listening to a social work colleague (Mary Hulme of Moonstone Geriatrics) give a talk on dementia at the public library, the following question came up:

“How can one keep Alzheimer’s from getting worse?”

Now, Alzheimer’s disease — the most common underlying cause of dementia symptoms — does slowly get worse no matter what. (Given enough years, it will eventually damage the brain to the point of causing a slow death, which is why Alzheimer’s is a terminal disease.)

But on the other hand, we do know that some things tend to slow the progression of brain decline, whereas other things seem to speed up the decline. In other words, the actions we take — and don’t take — can influence a person’s dementia journey.

In my experience, people often have heard about things that might slow down decline (exercise is one of my favorites).

But it seems to me that people are often much less well-informed about the things that can speed up Alzheimer’s decline. This is too bad, because often it is possible to take actions to avoid or minimize things that might cause dementia to get worse faster.

So today I’m going to write about what I think is the most important of these potentially dementia-accelerating problems: delirium.

Delirium: What it is, why it matters

[Read more…]

Delirium: What it is, why it matters

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