Frailty in the prediction of delirium in the intensive care unit: A secondary analysis of the Deli study

Abstract

AbstractBackgroundDelirium is an acute disorder of attention and cognition with an incidence of up to 70% in the adult intensive care setting. Due to the association with significantly increased morbidity and mortality, it is important to identify who is at the greatest risk of an acute episode of delirium while being cared for in the intensive care. The objective of this study was to determine the ability of the cumulative deficit frailty index and clinical frailty scale to predict an acute episode of delirium among adults admitted to the intensive care.MethodsThis study is a secondary analysis of the Deli intervention study, a hybrid stepped‐wedge cluster randomized controlled trial to assess the effectiveness of a nurse‐led intervention to reduce the incidence and duration of delirium among adults admitted to the four adult intensive care units in the south‐west of Sydney, Australia. Important predictors of delirium were identified using a bootstrap approach and the absolute risks, based on the cumulative deficit frailty index and the clinical frailty scale are presented.ResultsDuring the 10‐mth data collection period (May 2019 and February 2020) 2566 patients were included in the study. Both the cumulative deficit frailty index and the clinical frailty scale on admission, plus age, sex, and APACHE III (AP III) score were able to discriminate between patients who did and did not experience an acute episode of delirium while in the intensive care, with AUC of 0.701 and 0.703 (moderate discriminatory ability), respectively. The addition of a frailty index to a prediction model based on age, sex, and APACHE III score, resulted in net reclassified of risk. Nomograms to individualize the absolute risk of delirium using these predictors are also presented.ConclusionWe have been able to show that both the cumulative deficits frailty index and clinical frailty scale predict an acute episode of delirium among adults admitted to intensive care.