Prospective versus retrospective methods of identifying patients with delirium.

Objective: To determine if DSM-III criteria or clinical or discharge diagnoses, reviewed retrospectively, are as accurate an indicator of the presence of delirium as prospective evaluation by a psychiatrist.

Design: Selection of delirious patients prospectively by a psychiatrist, followed by retrospective record review of the same patients.

Setting: A referral-based university hospital.

Functional status outcomes of a nursing intervention in hospitalized elderly.

This paper examines the effectiveness of a nursing intervention for elderly hospitalized patients (N = 235) as measured by functional outcomes. A nursing intervention targeted at factors which influence acute confusion or delirium employed strategies to educate nursing staff, mobilize patients, monitor medication and make environmental and sensory modifications. Subjects who received the intervention were more likely to improve in functional status from admission to discharge than subjects who did not receive the intervention.

Delirium in the medically ill elderly: operationalizing the DSM-III criteria.

This prospective study determined the incidence and prevalence of delirium in 235 consecutive subjects over age 70 admitted to a general medicine hospital service. The DSM-III criteria for delirium were operationalized. Using accepted screening procedures, patients were referred for evaluation by a psychiatrist who determined whether delirium was present by applying explicit operational definitions to each of the DSM-III criteria.