Prevalence, management and outcomes of unrecognized delirium in a National Sample of 1,493 older emergency department patients: how many were sent home and what happened to them?

BACKGROUND: Retrospective studies estimate Emergency Department (ED) delirium recognition at <20%; few prospective studies have assessed delirium recognition and outcomes for patients with unrecognized delirium. OBJECTIVES: To prospectively measure delirium recognition by ED nurses and physicians, document their confidence in diagnosis and disposition, actual dispositions, and patient outcomes. METHODS: Prospective observational study of people ≥65 years. We assessed delirium using the Confusion Assessment Method, then asked ED staff if the patient had delirium, confidence in their assessment, if the patient could be discharged, and contacted patients 1 week postdischarge. We report proportions and 95% confidence intervals (Cls). RESULTS: We enrolled 1,493 participants; mean age was 77.9 years; 49.2% were female, 79 (5.3%, 95% CI 4.2-6.5%) had delirium. ED nurses missed delirium in 43/78 cases (55.1%, 95% CI 43.4-66.4%). Nurses considered 12/43 (27.9%) patients with unrecognized delirium safe to discharge. Median confidence in their delirium diagnosis for patients with unrecognized delirium was 7.0/10. Physicians missed delirium in 10/20 (50.0%, 95% CI 27.2-72.8) cases and considered 2/10 (20.0%) safe to discharge. Median confidence in their delirium diagnosis for patients with unrecognized delirium was 8.0/10. Fifteen patients with unrecognized delirium were sent home: 6.7% died at 1 week follow-up vs. none in those with recognized delirium and 1.1% in the rest of the cohort. CONCLUSION: Delirium recognition by nurses and physicians was sub-optimal at ~50% and may be associated with increased mortality. Research should explore root causes of unrecognized delirium, and novel strategies to systematically improve delirium recognition and patient outcomes.

Using a serious game to measure executive functioning: Response inhibition ability.

In previous research, we developed a serious target acquisition game (with moles as targets) for assessing cognitive speed. Tong, Chignell, Tierney, and Lee demonstrated that performance on the game may be a useful screening tool for risk of delirium onset. In this study, we validate a version of the game where there are not only targets (moles) that should be hit but also distractors (butterflies, or moles with hats) that should not be hit. We hypothesized that performance on the game should be a measure of response inhibition ability, which has been implicated as a factor in many types of psychopathology. We carried out an experiment (with 30 healthy participants) to test whether the serious game does in fact measure response inhibition by comparing game performance with a standard response inhibition task (the Go/No-Go discrimination task). Our results show that, with the distractors, the game does in fact assess response inhibition ability. We discuss the implications of this work for assessing executive functions in the elderly, and for evaluating recovery in neuro-rehabilitation, and declining ability to perform activities of daily living.

Predictive Ability of a Serious Game to Identify Emergency Patients With Unrecognized Delirium.

OBJECTIVES: Recognition of delirium in the emergency department (ED) is poor. Our objectives were to assess: (1) the diagnostic accuracy of the Predicting Emergency department Delirium with an Interactive Computer Tablet (PrEDICT) "serious game" to identify older ED patients with delirium compared to clinical recognition and (2) the feasibility of the PrEDICT application compared to existing tests of attention. DESIGN: Prospective observational study. SETTING: ED of a Canadian tertiary care center. PARTICIPANTS: We included ED patients, aged 70 years and older, with a minimum 4-hour stay. We excluded anyone with critical illness, communication barriers, and visual impairment or those unable to use a computer tablet. None had prevalent delirium by ED clinicians' routine clinical assessment. MEASUREMENTS: Participants were asked to tap targets on a tablet at four difficulty levels. Time and accuracy were automatically recorded. Other measures included the Confusion Assessment Method, the Delirium Severity Index, the Digit Vigilance Test (DVT), and the Choice Reaction Test (CRT). RESULTS: We enrolled 203 patients. Their average age was 80.6 years, 49.8% were female, and their average ED length of stay was 15.9 hours. Sixteen subjects had clinically unrecognized delirium, and 14 of them completed the PrEDICT game (87.5%). We developed a threshold score with 100% sensitivity (95% confidence interval [CI] = 76.8%-100.0%) and 59.7% specificity (95% CI = 52.3%-66.6%) to identify patients with clinically unrecognized delirium. The area under the curve was 0.86 (95% CI = 0.77-0.94). Completion rates were 196/203 (96.6%) for the PrEDICT serious game compared to 128/203 (63.1%) for the CRT and 51/203 (25.1%) for the DVT. CONCLUSION: Older ED patients were able to use our serious game, including 87.5% of those with clinically unrecognized delirium. The PrEDICT application has potential to act as a sensitive screening tool to identify older ED patients with clinically unrecognized delirium. J Am Geriatr Soc 67:2370-2375, 2019.

Monitoring Health Status in Long Term Care Through the Use of Ambient Technologies and Serious Games.

New technologies, such as serious games and ambient activities, are being developed to address problems of under-stimulation, anxiety, and agitation in millions of people living with dementia in long term care homes. Frequent interactions with instrumented versions of these technologies may not only be beneficial for long term care residents, but may also provide a valuable new set of multifaceted data related to the health status of residents over time. In this paper, we develop a model for health monitoring in healthcare environments and we report on two studies that show how medically relevant data can be collected from elderly residents and emergency department patients in an unobtrusive way. The first study shows how data related to cognitive abilities can be collected from elderly emergency department patients and the second study shows how detailed data on a range of factors can be collected from ambient activity units designed to provide engaging interactions for long term care residents. In summary, this paper proposes the use of new technologies to transform long term care from a data poor to a data rich environment, where the health status of long term care residents and elderly patients is more closely monitored.

A narrative review on cervical interventions in adults with chronic whiplash-associated disorder.

Introduction: Whiplash injuries are common in society, but clinical interventions are inconclusive on the most effective treatment. Research and reviews have been completed with the goal of determining clinical interventions that are effective for whiplash injuries and disorders, but literature has not recently been summarised on best practices for cervical spine interventions for adults with chronic whiplash. Purpose: The objective of this narrative review is to update and expand on previous works, to provide recommendations for clinical interventions and future research in the area of cervical spine rehabilitation for adults with chronic whiplash-associated disorder. Method: The Arskey and O'Malley methodology was used for this narrative review. CINHAL, EMBASE, Medline, PsychInfo, Scopus, Web of Science, as well as grey literature, were searched from 2003 to April 2017. Two reviewers screened titles and abstracts for relevance to the review, and content analysis summarised the study findings. A total of 14 citations were included in the final review. Findings: Exercise-based interventions targeted at the cervical spine appear most beneficial for adults with chronic whiplash-associated disorder (WAD). Invasive interventions still require more rigorous studies to deem their effectiveness for this population. Conclusion: Further research is required to investigate and determine clinically relevant results for cervical spine intervention in patients with chronic WAD.

Test-Retest Reliability of a Serious Game for Delirium Screening in the Emergency Department.

Introduction: Cognitive screening in settings such as emergency departments (ED) is frequently carried out using paper-and-pencil tests that require administration by trained staff. These assessments often compete with other clinical duties and thus may not be routinely administered in these busy settings. Literature has shown that the presence of cognitive impairments such as dementia and delirium are often missed in older ED patients. Failure to recognize delirium can have devastating consequences including increased mortality (Kakuma et al., 2003). Given the demands on emergency staff, an automated cognitive test to screen for delirium onset could be a valuable tool to support delirium prevention and management. In earlier research we examined the concurrent validity of a serious game, and carried out an initial assessment of its potential as a delirium screening tool (Tong et al., 2016). In this paper, we examine the test-retest reliability of the game, as it is an important criterion in a cognitive test for detecting risk of delirium onset. Objective: To demonstrate the test-retest reliability of the screening tool over time in a clinical sample of older emergency patients. A secondary objective is to assess whether there are practice effects that might make game performance unstable over repeated presentations. Materials and Methods: Adults over the age of 70 were recruited from a hospital ED. Each patient played our serious game in an initial session soon after they arrived in the ED, and in follow up sessions conducted at 8-h intervals (for each participant there were up to five follow up sessions, depending on how long the person stayed in the ED). Results: A total of 114 adults (61 females, 53 males) between the ages of 70 and 104 years (M = 81 years, SD = 7) participated in our study after screening out delirious patients. We observed a test-retest reliability of the serious game (as assessed by correlation r-values) between 0.5 and 0.8 across adjacent sessions. Conclusion: The game-based assessment for cognitive screening has relatively strong test-retest reliability and little evidence of practice effects among elderly emergency patients, and may be a useful supplement to existing cognitive assessment methods.

A Serious Game for Clinical Assessment of Cognitive Status: Validation Study.

BACKGROUND: We propose the use of serious games to screen for abnormal cognitive status in situations where it may be too costly or impractical to use standard cognitive assessments (eg, emergency departments). If validated, serious games in health care could enable broader availability of efficient and engaging cognitive screening. OBJECTIVE: The objective of this work is to demonstrate the feasibility of a game-based cognitive assessment delivered on tablet technology to a clinical sample and to conduct preliminary validation against standard mental status tools commonly used in elderly populations. METHODS: We carried out a feasibility study in a hospital emergency department to evaluate the use of a serious game by elderly adults (N=146; age: mean 80.59, SD 6.00, range 70-94 years). We correlated game performance against a number of standard assessments, including the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), and the Confusion Assessment Method (CAM). RESULTS: After a series of modifications, the game could be used by a wide range of elderly patients in the emergency department demonstrating its feasibility for use with these users. Of 146 patients, 141 (96.6%) consented to participate and played our serious game. Refusals to play the game were typically due to concerns of family members rather than unwillingness of the patient to play the game. Performance on the serious game correlated significantly with the MoCA (r=-.339, P <.001) and MMSE (r=-.558, P <.001), and correlated (point-biserial correlation) with the CAM (r=.565, P <.001) and with other cognitive assessments. CONCLUSIONS: This research demonstrates the feasibility of using serious games in a clinical setting. Further research is required to demonstrate the validity and reliability of game-based assessments for clinical decision making.