Delirium or acute
confusion state is a medical emergency, characterized by altered mental status
with fluctuating deficits in attention and cognition.
It’s an important
cause of morbidity and mortality. Even though most of the causes are secondary
to medical conditions and after they are solved, the delirium disappear, there
are cases that it can persist for weeks and months.
Many
risk factors are known, such as polypharmacy, restraint use, multiple
illness, frailty, advanced age. Instruments like CAM (Confusion Assessment
Method) can be useful to diagnose and non-pharmacological measures with
low-dose antipsychotic drugs can be helpful in its resolution.
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