A recent study has revealed that patients with acute decompensated heart failure (ADHF), the use of anxiolytic benzodiazepines may worsen the risk of severe delirium.
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| Photo: Acute Decompensated Heart Failure | InStyleHealth |
Carefully reviewing information from 650 treated ADHF
patients, researchers looked for potential risk factors for delirium, including
sociodemographic variables, intensive care needs, the use of mechanical ventilation,
surgery, and comorbidities like depression, diabetes, and dementia. Medications
for ADHF were also assessed. Delirium was diagnosed in accordance with the
Confusion Assessment Method (CAM).
Throughout the study observation coverage, 59 patients
experienced severe delirium, resulting in an incidence rate of 9.1%. Most
common medications prescribed were diuretics (96.6%) and beta-blockers (68.8%);
only 43 patients were given anxiolytic benzodiazepines.
Even with its low prescription numbers, the use of
anxiolytic benzodiazepines was determined in multivariate logistic regression
analysis as a significant risk factor for delirium.
Other risk factors identified included mechanical
ventilation or noninvasive positive pressure ventilation, depression, male
gender, and age.
Examining at discriminative models, experts further discovered
that including the use of anxiolytic benzodiazepines as a factor could
statistically improve the predictive ability of such models for delirium.
Researchers said that further investigations are
warranted to determine whether avoiding the use of anxiolytic benzodiazepines decreases
the incidence of delirium in patients with HF.
Source: PLoS One 2021