What is Delirium?

Delirium (also known as acute confusional state) is a common neuropsychiatric state that commonly occurs in 80% of Intensive Care patients and 40% of hospitalized elderly patients. Despite its prevalence, there is a lot of confusion about delirium. People use the term delirium to describe drowsiness, disorientation, and hallucination, but these are only some of the symptoms that pick out the syndrome. Other symptoms include an inability to to focus, sometimes sleeplessness, severe agitations, and irritability.

How is delirium defined?

There are a number of different definitions of delirium but all include core features. These features include disturbance of consciousness, which is a reduced awareness with reduced ability to focus, memory impairment or hallucination, and sleep problems whether insomnia or drowsiness. Many people confuse delirium with dementia, though the two sometimes occur together in elderly individuals. Dementia is a chronic impairment of mind, while delirium can vary from minutes to hours of symptoms.

What causes delirium?

Delirium is not a disease but a set of symptoms that can be caused by a number of different problems both caused by physical and psychiatric disorders. In very ill individuals it is typically caused by high fever. It is suspected that those who suffer delirium for short periods of time while feverish may be more prone to dementia in the future, showing that they are connected as mental disorders. Delirium can also be caused by extreme mental or emotional stress.

Being a malfunction of brain activity, anyone who has recently suffered surgery, shock, or a lack of food or water is also susceptible to delirium. Another common cause of delirium is withdrawal, particularly of alcohol. Delirium tends to predict death and has been considered by some to be the sixth vital sign that doctors should keep an eye on.

How can delirium be treated?

Delirium is a set of symptoms, not a disease, so it can only be treated by the treatment of underlying causes. Those suffering from delirium should also be given special medical care to optimize their brain function. This includes treating their pain, providing ample oxygen, and making sure they are well fed and hydrated. Delirium is sometimes treated with antipsychotics but these can often cause symptoms to worsen and generally do not do any good.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delirium