Critical Care Medicine

Journal Article Annotations
2019, 3rd Quarter

Critical Care Medicine

Annotations by O. Joseph Bienvenu, MD, PhD
September 2019

  1. Treatment and Outcomes in Adult Designated Psychiatric Emergency Service Units.

PUBLICATION #1 — Critical Care Medicine
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) related symptoms following an experience of delirium.
Grover S, Sahoo S, Chakrabarti S, Avasthi A.


Annotation

The findings:
In hospital-delirium severity, as measured with the DRS-R98, was associated with PTSD symptom severity 2 weeks after recovery from delirium. Delirium symptoms associated with PTSD symptoms included agitation and attentional deficits. As in previous studies of delirium in ICUs, duration of delirium was not associated with PTSD symptom severity.

Strength and weaknesses:
A strength is that the authors followed patients with delirium in any hospital setting, not just intensive care units (ICUs), and they also assessed delirium severity and associated symptoms, not just duration.

Relevance:
This is one of the few studies to show a direct link between delirium and posttraumatic stress symptoms. Most prior studies provided indirect evidence of a link between delirium in the ICU and later PTSD symptoms – e.g., PTSD was associated with amount of administered sedatives and memories of frightening nightmare-like experiences.

Type of study: Prospective cohort