Contributed by Flavia Barreto Garcez MD, PhD and Thiago Junqueira Avelino-Silva, MD, PhD Laboratorio de Investigacao Medica em Envelhecimento (LIM 66), Servico de Geriatria, Hospital das Clinicas HCFMUSP, Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade de Sao Paulo, Brazil The gut microbiota, the collection of microorganisms in our gastrointestinal tract,1 has gained increasing attention in recent years. It […]
Contributed by Kelly Atkins, DPsych (Clin Neuro), Melbourne Medical School, University of Melbourne. Our Research Question Postoperative delirium is the most common adverse outcome affecting older adults after surgery and is associated with a cascade of negative outcomes1, 2. While research activity in the field of postoperative delirium has exploded, the subjective experience of postoperative […]
Contributed by Rami K. Aldwikat1, Elizabeth Manias2, Alex C. Holmes3, Emily Tomlinson1 and Patricia Nicholson1 1 School of Nursing and Midwifery; Centre for Quality and Patient Safety Research in The Institute for Health Transformation, Geelong, Vic, Australia 2 School of Nursing and Midwifery, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia 3 Department of Mental Health, The Royal […]
Contributed by Dr. Sophia Wang, MD, MS, Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychiatry, Indiana University School of Medicine Postoperative delirium affects 15-50% of older adults undergoing major surgery.1 The literature strongly supports a bidirectional relationship between delirium and dementia.2 While both delirium and dementia affect cognition, they are quite different in their clinical presentations. Delirium is […]
Contributed by Zoë Tieges, PhD, Psychology Research Fellow, Geriatric Medicine, Usher Institute, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK Research question: do patients with delirium experience poorer outcomes when they have certain symptoms? Delirium is a syndrome with a wide spectrum of clinical presentations. According to DSM-5 (and the recent DSM-5 Text Revision) criteria, the key […]
Contributed by Ben Julian A. Palanca, MD, PhD, MSc, Associate Professor of Anesthesiology, Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis; Affiliated Faculty, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Washington University; Director, Sleepy Brain Lab Predictive biomarkers for prognosticating delirium onset and severity are needed for targeting interventions that may prevent delirium onset. […]
Contributed by C. Adrian Austin, MD, MSCR, Divisions of Geriatric Medicine and Pulmonary Diseases and Critical Care Medicine, University of North Carolina School of Medicine, Chapel Hill, NC Anxiety, depression and ICU delirium may be linked.1 Approximately 10% of the U.S. population takes an antidepressant, most commonly a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI).2 It remains […]
Franchesca Arias, PhD Assistant Professor, Department of Clinical and Health Psychology, University of Florida By 2050 it is expected that over 22% of the global population will be >60 years old.1 Late adulthood is a unique life stage2 associated with distinct cognitive vulnerabilities and medical needs. Of those ≥ 65 years old in the United […]
Sara LaHue, MD Assistant Professor of Clinical Neurology, University of California, San Francisco We cannot improve upon what we do not measure. While data suggests that more than 7 million adults in the United States develop delirium each year, this is likely an underestimate as delirium is poorly recognized without systematic screening.1 Delirium itself is […]
Christina Boncyk, MD, MPH Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN The generally positive results of older controlled studies evaluating antipsychotics for intensive care unit (ICU) delirium treatment helped potentiate the routine use of these agents in critically ill adults despite the serious limitations of these studies.1-3 While more recent publications of […]