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Call the Psychiatrist! - Study about Delirium in the context of liaison psychiatry

INTRODUCTION: Delirium is characterized as a short-term consciousness and cognition disturbance which tends to fluctuate during the course of the day. It is a common and serious problem, mainly in hospitalized older adults, potentially avoidable and often poorly recognized. OBJECTIVES: We propose an...

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Autores principales: Fonseca Vaz, I., Mouta, S., Jesus, B., Castro, S.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Cambridge University Press 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9566310/
http://dx.doi.org/10.1192/j.eurpsy.2022.613
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author Fonseca Vaz, I.
Mouta, S.
Jesus, B.
Castro, S.
author_facet Fonseca Vaz, I.
Mouta, S.
Jesus, B.
Castro, S.
author_sort Fonseca Vaz, I.
collection PubMed
description INTRODUCTION: Delirium is characterized as a short-term consciousness and cognition disturbance which tends to fluctuate during the course of the day. It is a common and serious problem, mainly in hospitalized older adults, potentially avoidable and often poorly recognized. OBJECTIVES: We propose an analysis on the theme through a work that evaluates the requests for psychiatric consultation made in a district hospital in Portugal during the course of 12 months. METHODS: We identified all patients on the requests for psychiatric consultation and obtained a demographic, clinical and consultation requests by medical specialties data and conducted statistical analysis using Excel. RESULTS: We identified 106 consultation requests, in which 41 cases were eventually diagnosed as delirium. Most (83%) were hyperactive delirium, 12% were hypoactive delirium and 5% were mixed delirium. Incidence was higher in males (59%) and in those aged between 66 and 80 years old (56.1%). Most consultation requests were made by Internal Medicine (46.3%), followed by General Surgery (26.8%), Pulmonology (14.6%), Orthopedics (9.8%) and Neurology (2.5%). Finally, we analyzed which symptoms mentioned in the request made physicians consider requesting a psychiatric evaluation. Approximately half of the cases (48.8%) reported psychomotor agitation, followed by temporal/spatial disorientation (41.5%) and aggressive behaviour (17.1%). CONCLUSIONS: We highlight a still notorious lack of proper identification of delirium, resulting in symptoms being incorrectly interpreted as a psychiatric disorder. This may cause a delay in the adequate diagnosis and management of the condition, increasing the morbidity and mortality of patients. DISCLOSURE: No significant relationships.
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spelling pubmed-95663102022-10-17 Call the Psychiatrist! - Study about Delirium in the context of liaison psychiatry Fonseca Vaz, I. Mouta, S. Jesus, B. Castro, S. Eur Psychiatry Abstract INTRODUCTION: Delirium is characterized as a short-term consciousness and cognition disturbance which tends to fluctuate during the course of the day. It is a common and serious problem, mainly in hospitalized older adults, potentially avoidable and often poorly recognized. OBJECTIVES: We propose an analysis on the theme through a work that evaluates the requests for psychiatric consultation made in a district hospital in Portugal during the course of 12 months. METHODS: We identified all patients on the requests for psychiatric consultation and obtained a demographic, clinical and consultation requests by medical specialties data and conducted statistical analysis using Excel. RESULTS: We identified 106 consultation requests, in which 41 cases were eventually diagnosed as delirium. Most (83%) were hyperactive delirium, 12% were hypoactive delirium and 5% were mixed delirium. Incidence was higher in males (59%) and in those aged between 66 and 80 years old (56.1%). Most consultation requests were made by Internal Medicine (46.3%), followed by General Surgery (26.8%), Pulmonology (14.6%), Orthopedics (9.8%) and Neurology (2.5%). Finally, we analyzed which symptoms mentioned in the request made physicians consider requesting a psychiatric evaluation. Approximately half of the cases (48.8%) reported psychomotor agitation, followed by temporal/spatial disorientation (41.5%) and aggressive behaviour (17.1%). CONCLUSIONS: We highlight a still notorious lack of proper identification of delirium, resulting in symptoms being incorrectly interpreted as a psychiatric disorder. This may cause a delay in the adequate diagnosis and management of the condition, increasing the morbidity and mortality of patients. DISCLOSURE: No significant relationships. Cambridge University Press 2022-09-01 /pmc/articles/PMC9566310/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1192/j.eurpsy.2022.613 Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Abstract
Fonseca Vaz, I.
Mouta, S.
Jesus, B.
Castro, S.
Call the Psychiatrist! - Study about Delirium in the context of liaison psychiatry
title Call the Psychiatrist! - Study about Delirium in the context of liaison psychiatry
title_full Call the Psychiatrist! - Study about Delirium in the context of liaison psychiatry
title_fullStr Call the Psychiatrist! - Study about Delirium in the context of liaison psychiatry
title_full_unstemmed Call the Psychiatrist! - Study about Delirium in the context of liaison psychiatry
title_short Call the Psychiatrist! - Study about Delirium in the context of liaison psychiatry
title_sort call the psychiatrist! - study about delirium in the context of liaison psychiatry
topic Abstract
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9566310/
http://dx.doi.org/10.1192/j.eurpsy.2022.613
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