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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| The impact of frailty and delirium on mortality in older inpatients | | Author(s) | Eamonn M P Eeles, Susan V White, Sinead M O'Mahony |
| Journal title | Age and Ageing, vol 41, no 3, May 2012 |
| Pages | pp 412-416 |
| Source | http://ageing.oxfordjournals.org/ http://www.bgs.org.uk/ |
| Keywords | In-patients ; Ill health ; Confusion ; Death ; At risk ; Evaluation. |
| Annotation | Delirium and frailty are common among hospitalised older people but delirium is often missed and frailty considered difficult to measure in clinical practice. This study aimed to explore the relationship between delirium and frailty in older in-patients and determine their impact on survival. 273 patients aged 75 years and above were screened for delirium at presentation and on alternate days throughout their hospital stay. Frailty status was measured by an index of accumulated deficits (FI), giving a potential score from 0 (no deficits) to 1.0 (all 33 deficits), with 0.25 used as the cut-off between `fit' and `frail'. Delirium was detected in 102 patients (mean FI: 0.33) and excluded in 171 (mean FI: 0.18); 111 patients were frail. Among patients with delirium, the median survival in fit patients was 359 days (95% CI: 118-600) compared with 88 days for those who were frail (95% CI: 5-171). Delirium was associated with higher levels of frailty: the identification of frail patients may help to target those at a greatest risk of delirium. Survival following delirium was poor with the combination of frailty and delirium conferring a particularly bleak prognosis. (JL). |
| Accession Number | CPA-120511010 A |
| Classmark | LF7: CH: EDC: CW: CA3: 4C |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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