Objective: Clinical practices have shown that delirium generally confers more risk in patients who receive treatment in internal medicine and surgery clinics, and particularly in the elderly with central nervous system insufficiency. We, therefore, intended to investigate the frequency of delirium patients and treatment approaches among patients who requested psychiatric consultation in our hospital. Method: This study was conducted through a retrospective assessment of database and consultation forms of psychiatric consultations performed. Consultation forms prepared by the Department of Psychiatry included questions about socio-demographic characteristics of the patients, their current medical diagnosis and treatment, objective of the consultation request, psychiatric history, mental examination findings, and diagnosis and treatment follow-up plan. All patients were evaluated for the development and persistence of delirium on a daily basis by psychiatry specialist with expertise in delirium assessment, using the Diagnostic Statistical Manual IV (DSM-IV) criteria of the American Psychiatric Association, the reference standard for delirium ratings. Results: During the study period (1 July 2009 to 30 June 2010), a total of 29410 patients were hospitalized in the Rize Training and Research Hospital. Within the same period, a psychiatric consultation was requested for 405 patients, among them, 106 diagnosed with delirium. Patients with delirium for whom psychiatric consultation was requested made only 0.36% of all hospitalized patients. Conclusions: 0.36% is a very low rate for delirium diagnosis, which is reportedly observed in 11 to 41% of the general hospital populations, and it may be said that psychiatric consultation requests for delirium are very limited. Our findings necessitate that consultation-liaison psychiatry should be made effective and a multidisciplinary treatment approach should be adopted in general hospitals as soon as possible.
Key words: Delirium, psychiatric consultation, general hospitals
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