One-third of hospitalized COVID-19 patients show signs of delirium
This is part of our Coronavirus Update series in which Harvard specialists in epidemiology, infectious disease, economics, politics, and other disciplines offer insights into what the latest developments in the COVID-19 outbreak may bring. Only a few decades ago, medical professionals believed they couldn’t do anything to stop a subset of elderly patients in the hospital from sliding into delirium — an acute state of confusion that can arise from illness or surgery and that raises risk of serious health complications and death. Then Sharon Inouye proved that delirium is preventable. She created the world’s most widely used checklist to identify delirium and developed a program that hundreds of hospitals have used to reduce cases of the condition by an estimated 40 percent. Inouye is a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and director of the Aging Brain Center in the Marcus Institute for Aging Research at Hebrew SeniorLife. Now, after...