What Cognitive Impairment Might a Senior With Hospital Induced Delirium Experience?
For those elderly adults who enter the hospital, risks and challenges go beyond just the particular issue that led to their hospitalization.
Studies show that at least half of all elderly adults who are hospitalized will develop a condition known as hospital-induced delirium. This delirium is a change in your parent’s awareness, cognitive functioning, or status that occurs during their time in the hospital. One way that this can significantly impact your parent is with changes to their cognitive abilities. This cognitive impairment can mimic dementia or other causes of confusion, which can make it easy for the medical team to miss the symptoms. Detecting these changes and bringing them to the attention of the medical team can help your parent to get the necessary diagnosis sooner, and begin treatment and management that can reduce the risk of severe complications.
Homecare in Frederick County VA: Hospital Induced Delirium
Some forms of cognitive impairment a senior with hospital-induced delirium can experience include:
- A difficulty with memory, especially with retaining recent events.
- Disorientation such as not being able to recognize the people around them, or not understanding where they are.
- A new difficulty with language, such as difficulty speaking or not understanding what is being said to them.
- Rambling
- Speaking nonsensically, such as not being able to string together a sentence, or replacing words with sounds or nonsense words.
- A new difficulty with reading or writing properly.
It is important to note that while the prior presence of dementia is not a necessary prerequisite of delirium, a senior with dementia can have a higher risk of experiencing delirium.
If your aging parent is already coping with the cognitive impairment of dementia, it is even more important that you pay close attention to their functioning and status while they’re in the hospital to detect increased symptoms, or new symptoms, that might indicate they are experiencing delirium. Even if they exhibit similar symptoms to their dementia when they are dealing with delirium, delirium can have further consequences including increased fall risk, and a higher chance of death during and after hospitalization.
How can home care help?
The time immediately following a discharge from the hospital can be challenging for your parent. Most often, discharge does not mark the end of your parent’s struggle or the completion of their healing. More likely, your senior will still have a time of recovery ahead of them, and during this time they can use all the care and support they can get.
Starting senior care for them during this time gives your parent access to personalized support and assistance that can help them through this time effectively and efficiently. The assistance with daily tasks can help your parents save energy, focus on healing and recovery, and prepare themselves to move forward with a healthier lifestyle. Extending the care even after recovery can encourage your parents to maintain their independence, stay in their own home, and pursue more fulfillment in their later years.
If you or an aging loved-one are considering Homecare in Frederick County, VA, please contact the caring staff at LivinRite Home Care. Call Us Today at (703) 634-9991.
Source:
https://betterhealthwhileaging.net
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