Relationship between delirium and dementia in elderly patients undergoing hip fracture surgery / 中华老年医学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To explore the correlation between delirium and dementia in elderly patients undergoing hip fracture surgery.Methods A prospective study was conducted on 118 elderly patients with hip fracture who were free from prefracture dementia.Caregivers or the relatives described the patients' prefracture cognition by the Informant Questionnaire on Cognitive Decline in the Elderly-short form (IQCODE SF).Delirium was assessed by the Confusion Assessment Method (CAM).After 6 months,cognition was reassessed by using 5 cognitive tests,taking DSM-Ⅳ as the diagnostic criteria.Results Among 32 cases (27％) suffered from delirium in the acute phase,12 cases (38％) reached to the diagnostic criteria of dementia after 6 months follow up,while there were 6 cases (7％) reached to the diagnostic criteria of dementia after 6 months follow-up in the group without delirium in the acute phase (x2 =16.81,P＜0.001).IQCODE-SF score had no statistically significant difference in the prediction of dementia.Conclusions In elderly patients without the history of dementia,delirium after hip fracture surgery is the major predictor of dementia within half years.