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Elderly people often experience multiple comorbidities that may contribute to the phenomenon of sundowning syndrome through neurodegeneration. Neurological disorders: Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease , Huntington's disease , Lewy body dementia , fronto-temporal dementia, subcortical dementia.
Here's how to distinguish "sundowning"—agitation or confusion later in the day in dementia patients—from typical aging, from doctors who treat older adults.
Delirium (formerly acute confusional state, an ambiguous term that is now discouraged) [1] is a specific state of acute confusion attributable to the direct physiological consequence of a medical condition, effects of a psychoactive substance, or multiple causes, which usually develops over the course of hours to days.
The Abbreviated Mental Test score (AMTS) is a 10-point test for rapidly assessing elderly patients for the possibility of dementia.It was first used in 1972, [1] [2] and is now sometimes also used to assess for mental confusion (including delirium) and other cognitive impairments.
The Confusion Assessment Method (CAM) is a diagnostic tool developed to allow physicians and nurses to identify delirium in the healthcare setting. [1] It was designed to be brief (less than 5 minutes to perform) and based on criteria from the third edition-revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III-R) .
In Psychology, confusion is the quality or emotional state of being bewildered or unclear. The term "acute mental confusion" [ 1 ] is often used interchangeably with delirium [ 2 ] in the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems and the Medical Subject Headings publications to describe the pathology .
More likely in the elderly with pre-existing declining mental functions, termed mild cognitive impairment (MCI). [13] MCI is a transitional zone between normal mental function and evident Alzheimer's disease or other forms of dementia. It is insidious, and seldom recognized, except in retrospect after affected persons are evidently demented.
As such, she developed the Confusion Assessment Method as a new tool for the identification of delirium in 1990, now the most widely used tool for identification of delirium worldwide. [7] In 1999, she published a landmark study in the New England Journal of Medicine demonstrating a 40% reduction in delirium using a multi-component non ...