Another Hospital Hazard for the Elderly

Hours before she fell and broke her hip, my mother, 85, lucid and whip-smart, was doing what she always did in the morning: drinking an entire pot of coffee and digesting both The New York Times and The Baltimore Sun.

The next day she came out of the hip surgery just fine. But within 24 hours, a totally different woman seemed to have taken over her capable mind and body.

She was disoriented. “This isn’t a very nice hotel,” she told us in the hospital room. “They haven’t even served cocktails. Let’s go.” My father, sister and I laughed, thinking it was just grogginess from the anesthesia. But then she developed trouble breathing, and the nurses clapped on an oxygen mask and whisked her off to another ward for more intensive monitoring.

Things quickly spiraled out of control. She tried to rip off her oxygen mask and IV tubes. She frantically tugged at the sheets and her skimpy hospital gown. Like the aged Lady Macbeth, she kept saying: “We have to clean this up! Clean this mess!”

They tied her hands to the bed. The medications to calm her down didn’t work. The doctors upped the sedation. Later, the physical therapist could barely rouse her to do the critical rehab on her brand-new hip.

What my family didn’t know at the time, because the doctors did not tell us, was that this frightening transformation was a classic case of hospital delirium — a brain dysfunction characterized by sudden confusion and inattention. It’s one of the most common, dangerous and costly complications of hospital stays for the elderly.

This type of delirium results in large part from the actions of medical workers, according to Dr. E. Wesley Ely, a professor of medicine and critical care at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. “Even well-meaning doctors are doing damage without knowing it,” he said.