Dementia patients receive worsening hospital course

According to a new study, more than half of patients with dementia will experience delirium while hospitalized - and failure to detect that delirium results in a quicker decline of these patients` physical and mental health. This study is published in the Journal of Hospital Medicine. “This study is important, as delirium is often overlooked and minimized in the hospital setting, especially in persons with dementia”, study principal investigator Donna Fick, a professor of nursing at Penn State University, said in a university news release. “And it illustrates that delirium is deadly, costly and impacts patient functioning”. Delirium can be caused by medication changes, dehydration and infections. One-third of the patients involved in the study were dehydrated, when arrived to hospital. “Preventing delirium is important because we want to discharge patients at their baseline or improved functioning”, Fick said. “We do not want them to go home with worse functioning than when they came into the hospital”.