Regular Research ArticleA Longitudinal Study on Delirium in Nursing Homes
Section snippets
Subjects
All NH residents in the three Swiss cantons Aargau, Basel-City, and Solothurn (corresponding to 13.5% of the total Swiss population)17 receive a Resident Assessment Instrument Minimum Data Set (RAI-MDS) assessment at 6-month intervals.18 We obtained the authorization of the Qualitäts-Systeme Aktiengesellschaft (Q-Sys AG; Systeme zur Qualitäts- und Kostensteuerung im Gesundheitswesen), that pools all RAI data, as well as of all directors of the NHs involved in this study to use these data for
Residents' Characteristics
The residents' characteristics per NHCAM group at the time of their first assessment are shown in Table 1.
In short, most variables are significantly different depending on the NHCAM status, but the effect size is often trivial to low. Low to moderate effect size was apparent for hearing and visual impairment, continence, mobility, new drugs, number of diseases, BADL, pain, whereas moderate to high effect size was observed for depression and CPS.
Types of Delirium Trajectories
Four delirium trajectories were identified, that
Discussion
Both subsyndromal and full delirium are highly prevalent in subjects living in NHs with an average of 38.1% of all residents of this study showing at least some signs of delirium and 5.4% presenting with full delirium at their initial assessment. These figures are within the range of those reported in the literature that vary, however, between nearly a quarter and more than half of all NH residents.12, 15, 32
A number of variables are associated with NHCAM status at the first assessment, but the
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