Mental status in the hospitalized elderly

Heath, Olga Jean (1992) Mental status in the hospitalized elderly. Doctoral (PhD) thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

[English] PDF (Migrated (PDF/A Conversion) from original format: (application/pdf)) - Accepted Version Available under License - The author retains copyright ownership and moral rights in this thesis. Neither the thesis nor substantial extracts from it may be printed or otherwise reproduced without the author's permission. Download (16MB) [English] PDF - Accepted Version Available under License - The author retains copyright ownership and moral rights in this thesis. Neither the thesis nor substantial extracts from it may be printed or otherwise reproduced without the author's permission. (Original Version)

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to assess the impact of hospitalization on mental status in the elderly. To this end subjects were given mental status exams in hospital and after discharge, with a retrospective assessment of functioning before illness obtained from an informant using the Informant's Interview section of the CAMDEX (Roth, Tyme, Mountjoy, Huppert, Hendrie, Verma, & Goddard, 1986). Other measures that were taken include diagnosis, number of medications in hospital and at home, and the likelihood of those medications having an effect on mental status. A comparison was made of performance on the mental status exam (M.M.S.E., Folstein, ,Folstein, & McHugh, 1975) in hospital and at home. As well, multiple regression analyses were used to determine which factors more strongly predicted performance on the M.M.S.E. on both occasions. -- The results reveal that 52% of the population interviewed scored below the accepted cutoff of 24/30 on the M.M.S.E.. This is an important finding given that those subjects who were delirious were eliminated from the study. Those subjects who scored in the impaired range on the M.M.S.E. in hospital did significantly better at home (p < .000). There was no such difference for the unimpaired group suggesting that the finding is not the result of a practice effect. The regression analyses show that mental status in-hospital and post-discharge was most strongly predicted by the CAMDEX pre-hospitalization measures. The amount of variance explained post-discharge was greater than that explained in hospital. The CAMDEX Informant's Interview subscales which best predicted performance, both at home and in hospital, for the group scoring in the impaired range, were the Activities of Daily Living and Paranoia.

Actions (login required)

View Item