Contributor:Santiago Cotobal Rodeles
Origin/affiliation: ECG Severo Ochoa University Hospital, Leganes, Madrid, Spain
As a reporter of the ECGI, I assisted the European delirium association yearly meeting that took place between the 16th and the 19th of November, and was co-hosted and co-organized with the Catalan Society of Geriatrics and Gerontology.
Delirium is an acute disorder of consciousness that results in confused thinking and reduced awareness of the environment. It is fluctuating and can express as hypoactive, hyperactive, or mixed. Delirium is common in elderly patients especially during the hospitalization phase and we as geriatricians must know how to treat it and especially how to prevent it.
During the yearly meeting, there was one teaching day that was in Spanish except for one lecture that was in Catalan and a day of pathophysiology for everyone to understand what is delirium and try to find the main reason why it happened. It was a very inclusive meeting, mainly for geriatricians but they also count with other medical specialties experts and other health workers as nurses or occupational therapists who also treat and prevent delirium in their daily work. The main point of the meeting was to discuss delirium phisyonpathology, treatment and prevention in different places as it can be in the community, in the emergency room, in the intensive care unit, acute ward/ orthogeriatric, and after the discharge of the patient forconect those topics before each lecture they show a image of a patient call Mr. Richard and all his odissey across delirium. Othe important topic was how to do the prehabilitation, the treatment during surgery and the post for prevent and treat delirium after operation, and specially how the main focus on delirium must be the prevention of it with mainly nonpharmacological treatments.
It was a conference with high level speakers. the first key lecture was given by Professor Kenneth Rockwood and the second by Professor Michael Avidan. Kenneth Rockwood talked about Frailty and delirium and it was a very motivational lecture to go deeper on frailty and delirium and Michael Avidan talked about anesthesia and what we can learn from it.
It was a really interesting and instructive meeting and I am looking forward to seeing how it will be the next one that will take place in Milan, especially after the lecture about the Delirium Day initiative that is an initiative made by some geriatricians in Italy to promote the publication of manuscripts for the better understanding of it and the teaching of delirium in universities. I think it si a very good initiative and I am glad to know that they will be the ones making possible next year EDA meeting.
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