Epidemiology
The highest prevalence of delirium (often 50% to 75% of patients) is generally seen in critically ill patients in the intensive care unit or ICU (which used to be referred to by the misnomers "ICU psychosis" or "ICU syndrome", terms largely abandoned for the more widely accepted and scientifically supported term ICU Delirium ). Since the advent of validated and easy-to-implement delirium instruments for ICU patients such as the Confusion Assessment Method for the ICU (CAM-ICU) and the Intensive Care Delirium Screening Checkllist (IC-DSC)., of the hundreds of thousands of ICU patients who develop delirium in ICUs every year, it has been recognized that most of them belong to the hypoactive variety, which is easily missed and invisible to the managing teams unless actively monitored using such instruments. The causes of delirium in such patients depend on the underlying illnesses, new problems like sepsis and low oxygen levels, and the sedative and pain medicines that are nearly universally given to all ICU patients. Outside the ICU, on hospital wards and in nursing homes, the problem of delirium is also a very important medical problem, especially for older patients. The most recent area of the hospital in which delirium is just beginning to be monitored routinely in many centers is the Emergency Department.
A systematic review of delirium in general medical inpatients showed that estimates of delirium prevalence on admission ranged from 10 to 31%.
Read more about this topic: Delirium