The American journal of geriatric psychiatry : official journal of the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry
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Am J Geriatr Psychiatry · Aug 2010
Comparative StudyWhite matter abnormalities as a risk factor for postoperative delirium revealed by diffusion tensor imaging.
Delirium is a common and critical clinical syndrome in older persons. The authors examined whether any abnormalities in the white matter (WM) assessed by diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) predisposes patients to develop delirium after cardiac surgery and also analyzed other risk factors for delirium. ⋯ The abnormalities in the deep WMs and thalamus that were mainly accelerated by aging may account for the vulnerability to postoperative delirium, and the semantic word fluency could be a useful predictive indicator of delirium.