The impact of frailty and delirium on mortality in older inpatients.

BACKGROUND: delirium and frailty are common among hospitalised older people but delirium is often missed and frailty considered difficult to measure in clinical practice. OBJECTIVE: to explore the relationship between delirium and frailty in older inpatients and determine their impact on survival. DESIGN AND SETTING: the prospective cohort study of 273 patients aged ≥75 years. MEASURES: patients were screened for delirium at presentation and on alternate days throughout their hospital stay. Frailty status was measured by an index of accumulated deficits (FI), giving a potential score from 0 (no deficits) to 1.0 (all 33 deficits), with 0.25 used as the cut-off between 'fit' and 'frail'. RESULTS: delirium was detected in 102 patients (mean FI: 0.33) and excluded in 171 (mean FI: 0.18) (P < 0.005); 111 patients were frail. Among patients with delirium, the median survival in fit patients was 359 days (95% CI: 118-600) compared with 88 days for those who were frail (95% CI: 5-171; P < 0.05). CONCLUSION: delirium was associated with higher levels of frailty: the identification of frail patients may help to target those at a greatest risk of delirium. Survival following delirium was poor with the combination of frailty and delirium conferring a particularly bleak prognosis.

Assessing balance and mobility to track illness and recovery in older inpatients.

BACKGROUND: Archetypal symptoms and signs are commonly absent in frail older people who are acutely unwell. This challenges both recognition of illness and monitoring of disease progression in people at high risk of prolonged hospital stays, institutionalization and death. OBJECTIVE: To determine whether bedside assessment of balance and mobility could track acute changes in the health status of older people admitted to hospital. DESIGN: Prospective cohort study. PARTICIPANTS: Four hundred nine patients, with a mean age of 81.8 years, admitted to general medical and rehabilitation wards at a tertiary care teaching hospital in Halifax, Nova Scotia. No patient refused assessment, and the only exclusion criterion was age. INTERVENTIONS: The Hierarchical Assessment of Balance and Mobility (HABAM) was completed daily during the first 2 weeks of admission. For each patient, frailty status was measured on admission by a Frailty Index based on a Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment (FI-CGA). MAIN MEASURES: Death and discharge destination. KEY RESULTS: Poor performance in balance, transfers and mobility was associated with adverse outcomes. Forty-eight percent of patients with the lowest scores in all three domains died, compared with none with the highest scores. The relative risk of death for people who deteriorated during the first 48 h of admission was 17.1 (95% confidence interval: 4.9-60.3). Changes in HABAM scores were related to the discharge destination: patients discharged home showed the greatest rate of improvement, whereas those discharged to institutions stabilised at a lower level of performance. Fitter patients tended to have better performance on admission and faster recovery. CONCLUSIONS: Daily bedside observation of mobility and balance allows assessment of acute changes in the health of older people. Frailty slows recovery of mobility and balance, and reduces recovery potential. By identifying patients most vulnerable to adverse outcomes, the HABAM and FI-CGA may facilitate risk stratification in older people admitted to hospital.

Specialist physician approaches to discussing cardiopulmonary resuscitation for frail older adults: a qualitative study.

BACKGROUND: Despite the impact and importance of end-of-life discussions, little is known about how physicians discuss cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) with patients and their families. The necessary components for successful communication about CPR are poorly understood and an established framework to structure these conversations is lacking. Here, we were motivated to understand how physicians approach resuscitation planning with families when older patients have limited life expectancy and a high burden of illness. METHOD: Qualitative analysis was conducted of semi-structured interviews of 28 physicians of varying medical sub-specialties in a tertiary care hospital. RESULTS: Most physicians explored the surrogates' goals and values, but few provided explicit information about the patients' overall health status or expected long-term health outcome related to CPR and underlying illnesses. CONCLUSION: There is considerable heterogeneity in physicians' approaches to CPR discussions. The principle of autonomy is dominant with less emphasis on providing adequate information for effective decision-making.

Hospital use, institutionalisation and mortality associated with delirium.

BACKGROUND: Delirium is a disorder affecting consciousness, which gives rise to core clinical features and associated symptoms. Older patients are particularly prone, owing to higher rates of pre-existing cognitive impairment, frailty, co-morbidity and polypharmacy. OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to investigate the hypotheses that delirium affects the most vulnerable older adults and is associated with long-term adverse health outcome. METHODS: This prospective cohort study evaluated 278 medical patients aged > or = 75 years admitted acutely to a district general hospital in South Wales. Patients were screened for delirium at presentation and on alternate days throughout their hospital stay. Assessments also included illness severity, preadmission cognition, co-morbidity and functional status. Patients were followed for 5 years to determine rates of institutionalisation and mortality. Number of days in hospital in the 4 years prior to and 5 years after index admission were recorded. RESULTS: Delirium was detected in 103 patients and excluded in 175. Median time to death was 162 days (interquartile range 21-556) for those with delirium compared with 1,444 days (25% mortality 435 days, 75% mortality>5 years) for those without (P < 0.001). After adjusting for multiple confounders, delirium was associated with an increased risk of death (hazard ratio range 2.0-3.5; P < or = 0.002). Institutionalisation was higher in the first year following delirium (P = 0.03). While those with delirium tended to be older with more preadmission cognitive impairment, greater functional dependency and more co-morbidity, they did not spend more days in hospital in the 4 years prior to index admission. CONCLUSIONS: Delirium is associated with high rates of institutionalisation and an increased risk of death up to 5 years after index event. Prior to delirium, individuals seem to compensate for their vulnerability. The impact of delirium itself, directly or indirectly, may convert vulnerability into adverse outcome.

Attitudes to aging: a comparison of obituaries in Canada and the U.K.

BACKGROUND: Populations worldwide are aging and the overall prevalence of dementia at death is now 30%. Since the contemporary social impact of a disease is indicated by the frequency of its newspaper coverage and since obituary notices illuminate conceptions of death, we hypothesized that obituary notices placed by families would reflect societal attitudes to aging and dementia. METHODS: We undertook critical discourse analysis of obituaries in representative national and local newspapers in Canada and the U.K. RESULTS: In the 799 obituaries studied, chronological age, suggested donations in memory of the deceased, and donations to dementia charities were each included in significantly more obituaries in Canadian newspapers than in U.K. ones. Military service was explicit for significantly more men aged > or = 80 years in Canada compared to the U.K. (41% versus 4%; p < 0.05). Of the donations to medical charities, nearly half (n = 117) were to cancer charities and one-fifth (54) to heart and stroke foundations. In the U.K., obituaries for those aged > or = 70 years were more likely to recommend donations to children's charities (n = 12) or the Royal National Lifeboat Institution than dementia charities. CONCLUSIONS: Donations to dementia charities were significantly more common in obituaries in Canada than in the U.K. In both countries, donations to medical charities did not reflect disease prevalence or impact to the individual. Societal attitudes in the U.K. may be impacted by the fragmentation of aging research and antipathy to geriatric medicine in the national medical press.