• Martin G Kat, Jos F de Jonghe, Ralph Vreeswijk, Tjeerd van der Ploeg, Willem A van Gool, Piet Eikelenboom, and Kees J Kalisvaart.
• Department of Geriatric Medicine, Medical Center Alkmaar, Alkmaar, The Netherlands. psykat@hetnet.nl
• Age Ageing. 2011 May 1;40(3):312-8.

Backgrounddelirium after hip-surgery is associated with poor outcome. Few studies examined the mortality risk associated with delirium in elderly hip-surgery patients after 1 year or more. Aim of this study was to examine the hazard risk associated with delirium in elderly hip-surgery patients at 2-year follow-up, controlling for baseline risk factors and interaction effects.Methodsthis is a secondary analysis based on data from a controlled clinical trial evaluating efficacy of haloperidol prophylaxis for delirium conducted in a large medical school-affiliated general hospital in Alkmaar, The Netherlands. Randomised and non-randomised patients (n = 603) were followed-up for 2 years. Predefined risk factors and other potential risk factors for delirium were assessed prior to surgery. Primary outcome was time of death during the follow-up period. Cox proportional hazards were estimated and compared across patients who had postoperative delirium during hospitalisation and those who did not.Resultsa total of 90/603 patients (14.9%) died during the study period and 74/603 (12.3%) had postoperative delirium. Incidence of delirium was higher in patients who died (32.2%) compared with those who survived (8.8%). The interaction effect of delirium by illness severity on mortality was significant after adjusting for predefined delirium risk factors and other potential covariates including study intervention (adjusted Hazard risk = 1.05, 95% CI 1.02-1.08). A total of 14/27 delirium patients who were severely ill on admission died during follow-up versus 15/47 delirium patients who were not (RR 1.63 CI 0.93-2.83).Conclusionsdelirium does not independently predict mortality at 2-year follow-up in elderly hip-surgery patients. However, outcome from delirium is particularly poor when other risk factors are present.

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