Incidence and Risk Factors of Delirium in Children and Adolescents Undergoing Surgery in the Hospital

Background: In children, risk factors for delirium include anesthetics such as sevoflurane, surgeries such as dentistry and ENT, autism, and ADHD. Objectives: The present study was conducted to determine the rate of delirium in children and adolescents hospitalized for surgery. Methods: In this cross-sectional study, 75 children and adolescents hospitalized for surgery were evaluated for delirium. The instrument used was the Cornell Assessment of Pediatric Delirium (CAPD), which has 2 sections and 4 questions in each section. The Kernel tool was scored by an anesthesiologist once per shift and every 12 hours until the patient was discharged. In all cases, ethical codes were observed in the research. Data analysis was performed in SPSS 16 software. Results: Results showed a total of 75 patients were studied, of which 56% were in the adolescent age range and female gender, 84% had surgery duration less than 45 minutes, and 53.3% were hospitalized due to non-emergency surgeries. The incidence of delirium in patients was 11 (14.7%), which in Table 1 showed that there is a relationship between delirium and gender (P = 0.003), type of inpatient ward (P = 0.02), surgery duration (P = 0.02), coexisting disease (P = 0.000), and type of surgery (P = 0.006). Also, out of 86 patients studied, 11 patients had delirium and 64 patients did not. It was also related to gender 0.04 [4.16 (1.00 - 17.8)], type of inpatient ward 0.02 [0.27 (0.073 - 1.06)], surgery duration 0.04 [4.00 (0.95 - 16.79)], and type of surgery 0.006 [0.088 (0.011 - 0.73)]. Conclusions: Although the incidence of delirium was low in this study, it is necessary to identify factors affecting the occurrence of delirium and to implement interventions to prevent delirium in patients undergoing surgery.