Incidence, Severity and Treatment of Delirium in Cardiac Surgery Patients: A Before-after Study

Rigshospitalet

Status: Completed

Conditions: Delirium

Treatments: Other: systematic screening and treatment of delirium

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT01774240

VJ1

Details and patient eligibility

About

Delirium is a common yet under diagnosed condition in hospitalized patients, and the incidence have not previously been described in Danish cardiac surgery patients. The present study seeks to describe the incidence and duration of delirium in this group of patients, before and after the introduction of standardized screening tool and a guideline for treatment of delirium after cardiac surgery.

Full description

Delirium is a common yet under diagnosed condition in cardiac surgery patients, and may cause prolonged cognitive impairment and increased risk of complications. Patients are at risk of e.g. pulling catheters and lines and may fall attempting to get out of bed. The aging patient population present with many risk factors for developing delirium, but diagnostic tools have been few. Almost 50% present with hypoactive delirium, which is often not diagnosed, nor treated correctly. To optimize effect, treatment should be initiated early, maintained until clinical improvement is observed, and then tapered gradually. Recently, Delirium Observation Screening scale (DOS scale) was developed and validated in elective cardiac surgery patients in the Netherlands, with interesting results. This encouraged us to evaluate the effects of systematic delirium screening and treatment in cardiac surgery patients. To our knowledge, no prior studies have evaluated use of DOS scale in this context.

OBJECTIVES To evaluate the incidence and severity of delirium, and the effects of standardized treatment in a population of Danish cardiac surgery patients.

Enrollment: 230 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• adult patients admitted for cardiac surgery at department of cardiothoracic surgery, Rigshospitalet, denmark

Exclusion criteria

• patients under age 18,
• patients that died within 24 hours after admission.

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Non-Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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230 participants in 2 patient groups

before

No Intervention group

Description:

no systematic approach

after

Experimental group

Description:

systematic screening and treatment of delirium

Treatment:

Other: systematic screening and treatment of delirium