NO SHORTCUTS FOR DELIRIUM PREVENTION

Abstract

Comments on an article An intervention integrated into daily clinical practice reduces the incidence of delirium during hospitalization in elderly patients by M. T. Vidan et al. (2009). The authors claim that the requirement for extra staff and payment of a fee for access to copyrighted materials limited their ability to implement the full HELP program in their healthcare system, but the cost-effectiveness of the program despite these extra costs has been well demonstrated, and the program has been successfully implemented at more than 60 sites and in five countries. In summary, given the substantial methodological limitations of the author's study, the conclusions are erroneous and misleading. Their intervention is not effective in prevention of delirium. The take-home message from this article is that watering down the proven HELP intervention strategy is inefficient and ineffective. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)