Non-pharmacological interventions for preventing delirium in hospitalised non-ICU patients

Background

Delirium is an acute neuropsychological disorder that is common in hospitalised patients. It can be distressing to patients and carers and it is associated with serious adverse outcomes. Treatment options for established delirium are limited and so prevention of delirium is desirable. Non‐pharmacological interventions are thought to be important in delirium prevention.

Objectives

To assess the effectiveness of non‐pharmacological interventions designed to prevent delirium in hospitalised patients outside intensive care units (ICU).

Search methods

We searched ALOIS, the specialised register of the Cochrane Dementia and Cognitive Improvement Group, with additional searches conducted in MEDLINE, Embase, PsycINFO, CINAHL, LILACS, Web of Science Core Collection, ClinicalTrials.gov and the World Health Organization Portal/ICTRP to 16 September 2020. There were no language or date restrictions applied to the electronic searches, and no methodological filters were used to restrict the search.

Selection criteria

We included randomised controlled trials (RCTs) of single and multicomponent non‐pharmacological interventions for preventing delirium in hospitalised adults cared for outside intensive care or high dependency settings. We only included non‐pharmacological interventions which were designed and implemented to prevent delirium.

Data collection and analysis

Two review authors independently examined titles and abstracts identified by the search for eligibility and extracted data from full‐text articles. Any disagreements on eligibility and inclusion were resolved by consensus. We used standard Cochrane methodological procedures. The primary outcomes were: incidence of delirium; inpatient and later mortality; and new diagnosis of dementia. We included secondary and adverse outcomes as pre‐specified in the review protocol. We used risk ratios (RRs) as measures of treatment effect for dichotomous outcomes and between‐group mean differences for continuous outcomes. The certainty of the evidence was assessed using GRADE. A complementary exploratory analysis was undertaker using a Bayesian component network meta‐analysis fixed‐effect model to evaluate the comparative effectiveness of the individual components of multicomponent interventions and describe which components were most strongly associated with reducing the incidence of delirium.