Pain medications, infections, medical illnesses, ventilators, dehydration or withdrawing from alcohol can be risk factors for delirium. Hospitals are one of the biggest culprits. They’re noisy, busy and not conducive to getting a good night’s sleep. It all lowers the threshold for becoming delirious. In Canada, there are 250,000 ICU admissions every year. As many as 80 per cent of those admissions are patients who can experience delirium. Doctors say it’s often underdiagnosed and under-reported, a serious and expensive burden on the public health-care system.

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