RESUMO
Altered mental status (AMS) comprises a group of clinical symptoms rather than a specific diagnosis, and includes cognitive disorders, attention disorders, arousal disorders, and decreased level of consciousness. Patients often manifest vague symptoms, thus, AMS diagnosis and treatment are highly challenging for general medicine physicians. MATERIAL: This was an observational cross-sectional analytical study. This study will be conducted in Department of General Medicine, SMS Medical College and attached group of hospitals, Jaipur, Rajasthan, India. Duration of this study was 1 year. We analysed 150 cases in this study. OBSERVATION: We found that mean age for this study was 55.1 years. Major co-morbidity was Hypertension, ALD/CLD/PHTN, T2DM and carcinoma lung with 46.6%, 25.3%, 22.6% and 18% respectively. We found that 81.3% patients are non-alcoholic followed by 50% non-smoker. In our study 52.6% patients had structural Neurological aetiology followed by 17.3% of CO2 Narcosis, 10% patients had hepatic encephalopathy. 5.3% patients were having hypoglycemia and 4.6% were having hyponatremia. In brain MRI we found that 22.6% patients are of CVA ICH, 16.6% patients with CVA Infarct and 3.3% patients of hypoxic ischemic brain injury. CONCLUSION: In our study, we found that neurological causes for altered sensorium were more common than primary non-neurological diseases. Though neuroimaging was helpful in large number of patients, good history, thorough physical examination & laboratory reports also were vital in establishing diagnosis.