Hostname: page-component-f554764f5-68cz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-09T16:22:46.909Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Delirium and Dementia: Diagnostic Criteria and Fatality Rates

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

Peter V. Rabins
Peter V. Rabins*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland 21205
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Summary

Medically ill patients diagnosed at index admission as delirious, i.e., suffering cognitive decline and an altered state of consciousness, had higher fatality rates than demented, cognitively intact or depressed patients. At a one-year follow-up the death rate of those who had been delirious was still higher than that of demented patients. Delirious patients were more likely to have a diffusely slow EEG, tachycardia and hyperthermia and lower mean systolic and diastolic blood pressure. These results validate the distinction between delirium and dementia and the importance of alteration of consciousness as a defining characteristic of delirium.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 140 , Issue 2 , February 1982 , pp. 149 - 153
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1982 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

American Psychiatric Association (1980) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Third Edition (DSM-III). Washington, DC: APA.Google Scholar
Bonhoeffer, K. (1910) Exogenous psychoses. In Themes and Variations in European Psychiatry (1974), pp 47—52 (eds. Hirsch, S. R. and Shepherd, M.). Bristol: John Wright.Google Scholar
Busse, E. W. (1973) EEG in gerontology. Clinical Electroencephalography, 4, 153–63.Google Scholar
Cutting, J. (1980) Physical illness and psychosis. British Journal of Psychiatry, 136, 109–19.Google Scholar
DePaulo, J. R., Folstein, M. F. & Gordon, B. (1980) Psychiatric screening on a neurological ward. Psychological Medicine, 10, 125–32.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Engel, G. & Romano, J. (1944) Studies of delirium II: Reversibility of the encephalogram with experimental procedure. Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry, 51, 378–92.Google Scholar
Engel, G. & Romano, J. (1959) Delirium, a syndrome of cerebral insufficiency. Journal of Chronic Disease, 9, 260–77.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Esquirol, J. F. D. (1838) Mental Maladies: A Treatise on Insanity. Re-issue of 1845 translation by Hunt, E. K., 1965, p 417. New York and London: Hafner.Google Scholar
Folstein, M., Folstein, S. & McHugh, P. (1975) “Mini-mental state”: A practical method for grading the cognitive state of patients for the clinician. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 12, 189–98.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Folstein, M., Folstein, S. & McHugh, P. (1976) Phenomenological approaches to the treatment of “organic” psychiatric syndromes. In The Therapist's Handbook, pp 279–86 (ed. Wolman, B.). New York: Van Nostrand-Reinhold.Google Scholar
Gruenberg, E. (1975) Epidemiology. In Alzheimer's Disease: Senile Dementia and Related Disorders, p 325 (eds. Katzman, R., Terry, R. D. and Bick, K. L.). New York: Raven Press.Google Scholar
Guze, S. B. & Cantwell, D. P. (1964) The prognosis in “organic brain” syndromes. American Journal of Psychiatry, 120, 878–81.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Guze, S. B. & Daengsurisri, S. (1967) Organic brain syndromes: Prognostic significance in general medical patients. Archives of General Psychiatry, 17, 365–6.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Heller, S. S. & Kornfeld, D. S. (1975) Delirium and related problems. In American Handbook of Psychiatry, Vol 4, pp 43—66 (ed. Reiser, M.). New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Jarvik, L. F. & Falek, A. (1963) Intellectual stability and survival in the aged. Journal of Gerontology, 18, 173–6.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kay, D. W. K., Norris, V. & Post, F. (1956) Prognosis in psychiatric disorders of the elderly. Journal of Mental Science, 102, 129–40.Google ScholarPubMed
Kay, D. W. K., Beamish, P. & Roth, M. (1963) Old age disorders in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. British Journal of Psychiatry, 110, 146–58.Google Scholar
Lipowski, J. Z. (1967) Delirium, clouding of consciousness and confusion. Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases, 145, 227–55.Google Scholar
Lishman, A. W. (1978) Organic Psychiatry, p 707. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Marsden, C. D. (1978) The diagnosis of dementia. In Studies in Geriatric Psychiatry, pp 105–18 (eds. Issacs, A. D. and Post, F.). New York: John Wiley.Google Scholar
Pauker, N., Folstein, M. F. & Moran, T. (1978) The clinical utility of the hand-held tachistoscope. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 166, 126–9.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Post, F. (1965) Clinical Psychiatry of Late Life. Oxford: Pergamon Press.Google Scholar
Roth, M. (1955) The natural history of mental disorder in old age. Journal of Mental Science, 101, 281—301.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sandok, B. A. (1975) Organic brain syndrome. In Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry II, p 1065 (eds. Freedman, A. M., Kaplan, H. I. and Sadock, B. J.). Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins.Google Scholar
Slater, E. & Roth, M. (1973) Clinical Psychiatry, p 600. London: Baillière, Tindall and Cassell.Google Scholar
Tsai, L. & Tsuang, N. (1979) The mini-mental state test and computerized tomography. American Journal of Psychiatry, 136, 436–8.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Victor, M. & Adams, R. (1953) Effects of alcohol on the nervous system. Research Publications, Association for Research in Nervous and Mental Disease, 32, 526–73.Google ScholarPubMed
Wells, C. (1977) Dementia. Philadelphia: F. A. Davis.Google ScholarPubMed
Wolff, H. G. & Curran, D. (1935) Nature of delirium and allied states: The dysergastic reaction. Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry, 51, 378–92.Google Scholar
World Health Organization (1978) Mental Disorders: Glossary and Guide to Their Classification In Accordance With the Ninth Revision of The International Classification Of Disease. Geneva: WHO.Google Scholar
Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.