The task force issued five statements related to the management of anxiety, agitation/sedation, delirium, immobility, and sleep disruption in adults admitted to the ICU. 5 key findings →
Design: systematic review
Participants: 24
Evidence: high
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Main results We included 39 trials that recruited 16,082 participants, assessing 22 different interventions or comparisons. 4 key findings →
Participants: 39
Evidence: high
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76/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 76 out of 100.
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JAMA neurology
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2020-11-01
Of 1583 articles, data subjected from the 24 studies (including 3562 patients who experienced delirium and 6987 controls who did not) were included in a random-effects meta-analysis for pooled effect estimates and random-effects meta-regressions to identify sources of study variance. 3 key findings →
Design: systematic review
Participants: 3,562
Evidence: high
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74/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 74 out of 100.
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JAMA
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2004-04-01
Of 275 patients, 51 (18.5%) had persistent coma and died in the hospital. 2 key findings →
Design: cohort study
Participants: 275
Evidence: moderate
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Delirium (or acute confusional state) affects 35% to 65% of patients after hip-fracture repair, and has been independently associated with poor functional recovery. 4 key findings →
Design: randomized controlled trial
Participants: 62
Evidence: high
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72/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 72 out of 100.
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BMJ
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2024-03-27
The study findings suggest delirium was a strong risk factor for death and incident dementia among older adult patients. 3 key findings →
Design: cohort
Participants: 110,422
Evidence: moderate
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72/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 72 out of 100.
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JAMA
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2001-12-01
Compared with the reference standard for diagnosing delirium, 2 study nurses using the CAM-ICU had sensitivities of 100% and 93%, specificities of 98% and 100%, and high interrater reliability (kappa = 0.96; 95% confidence interval, 0.92-0.99). 3 key findings →
Design: cohort study
Participants: 111
Evidence: moderate
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71/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 71 out of 100.
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Neurology
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2009-05-01
Delirium can accelerate the trajectory of cognitive decline in patients with Alzheimer disease (AD). 2 key findings →
Design: prospective cohort
Participants: 72
Evidence: high
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70/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 70 out of 100.
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JAMA psychiatry
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2017-03-01
There were 987 participants (290 from Vantaa 85+, 241 from the Cambridge City Over-75s Cohort, and 456 from the Cognitive Function and Ageing Study) with neuropathologic data; mean (SD) age at death was 90 (6.4) years, including 682 women (69%). 5 key findings →
Design: cohort study
Participants: 987
Evidence: moderate
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Our findings suggest that clinicians should consider sedative-associated, hypoxic, and septic delirium, which often co-occur, as distinct indicators of acute brain injury and seek to identify all potential risk factors that may impact on long-term cognitive impairment, especially those that are iatrogenic and potentially modifiable such as sedation. 2 key findings →
Design: cohort study
Participants: 1,048
Evidence: moderate
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68/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 68 out of 100.
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JAMA surgery
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2015-12-01
Major postoperative complications and delirium are separately associated with adverse events and demonstrate a combined effect. 4 key findings →
Design: cohort study
Participants: 566
Evidence: moderate
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Of 23 558 people without pre-existing dementia, 4135 (17·6%) had an admission with delirium. 5 key findings →
Design: cohort
Participants: 23,558
Evidence: moderate
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67/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 67 out of 100.
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Age and ageing
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2020-04-01
The incidence and prevalence of delirium in hospitals appears to be stable, though publication bias may have masked true changes. 5 key findings →
Design: systematic review
Evidence: high
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Delirium is the most common manifestation of brain dysfunction in critically ill patients. 5 key findings →
Participants: 25,000
Evidence: low
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Despite methodologic limitations, certain risk factors for delirium seem to be consistent and could help identify high-risk patients. 3 key findings →
Participants: 1,365
Evidence: low
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66/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 66 out of 100.
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Nature Aging
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2025-11-24
Delirium is an acute change in cognition, common in hospitalized older adults, and associated with high healthcare and human cost; however, delirium's genetic and proteomic background remains poorly understood. 4 key findings →
Design: meta-analysis
Participants: 1,059,130
Evidence: high
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Delirium is an important independent prognostic determinant of hospital outcomes including new nursing home placement, death or new nursing home placement, and functional decline-even after controlling for age, gender, dementia, illness severity, and functional status. 3 key findings →
Design: cohort study
Participants: 727
Evidence: moderate
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We developed machine learning prediction models for post-operative delirium that performed better than chance and are comparable with traditional stepwise logistic regression. 1 key finding →
Design: cohort study
Participants: 134
Evidence: moderate
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65/100
✓ Peer-reviewed
alzhub usefulness score 65 out of 100.
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Age and Ageing
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2026-03-20
Among 2556 patients (mean age 79 ± 9 years; 56% women), delirium occurred in 957 (37%). 5 key findings →
Design: cohort study
Participants: 2,556
Evidence: moderate
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The 3D-CAM operationalizes the CAM algorithm using a 3-minute structured assessment with high sensitivity and specificity relative to a reference standard and could be an important tool for improving recognition of delirium. 2 key findings →
Design: cross-sectional
Participants: 201
Evidence: low
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Clinicians treating people with a hip fracture should be vigilant towards post-operative delirium if their patients are older, have pre-existing cognitive impairment and poorer overall general health. 4 key findings →
Participants: 6,704
Evidence: low
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Recent studies suggest that delirium is associated with risk of dementia and also acceleration of decline in existing dementia. 5 key findings →
Participants: 232
Evidence: low
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In those aged 65 years or older, delirium was overall associated (all p<0·001, age and sex adjusted) with dementia ( adj OR 3·63 [95% CI 2·65–4·98]), pre-admission dependency (2·63 [2·02–3·43]), comorbidity burden (1·04 [1·02–1·05]), and frailty (moderate vs low risk 3·62 [2·70–4·85] and high vs low risk 11·85 [7·24–19·42]), with stronger associations in patients without comorbid dementia than in those with comorbid dementia. 4 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study
Participants: 290
Evidence: moderate
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Delirium is a frequent complication in older ICU patients and often persists beyond their ICU stay. 3 key findings →
Design: cohort study
Participants: 45
Evidence: moderate
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Delirium is a distressing neurocognitive disorder recently linked to sleep disturbances. 4 key findings →
Design: longitudinal study
Participants: 818
Evidence: moderate
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How the 0–100 score works — and why some entries are capped
This is alzhub's own score. It is not an official metric, not an impact factor,
and no journal, publisher or ranking body endorses it. We built it so that a reader who is not a
scientist can tell a landmark trial from a conference abstract without having to already know the
difference. Every point comes from one of 20 components, all of them printed on the study itself,
so you can disagree with our arithmetic rather than having to trust the total.
- Journal tier up to 10 pts
- Journal's citation record up to 4 pts
- Study design up to 12 pts
- Strength of evidence up to 5 pts
- Peer-review validation up to 10 pts
- How recent up to 5 pts
- Sample size up to 4 pts
- Effect reported up to 3 pts
- Studied in people up to 3 pts
- Randomised / blinded up to 2 pts
- Times cited up to 7 pts
- Citations per year up to 5 pts
- Impact for its field and year up to 6 pts
- Cited by studies here up to 6 pts
- Still being cited up to 4 pts
- Senior author's track record up to 4 pts
- Institution's track record up to 3 pts
- Multi-centre collaboration up to 3 pts
- Indexed in PubMed up to 2 pts
- Free to read up to 2 pts
Journals are placed in ordered tiers, never given a numeric impact factor — we
could not verify current impact factors from a source we control, and an invented one would be
worse than none. Tier 1 is the top-tier general journals (NEJM, The Lancet, JAMA, Nature, Science,
Nature Medicine); tier 2 is the leading specialty journals; tier 3 is every other peer-reviewed
journal. A separate part scores how much the journal's own papers are cited, which tells the
tier-3 journals apart.
Two rules we don't bend. First, we never fill in a
missing value: if a record does not state a sample size or a design, that component scores
zero, and if we simply have no data for a part, such as a citation count, that part is left out and
the study is scored on the parts we could check. The study card says which. Second, anything that is not a peer-reviewed
article is capped at 16/100 and carries a warning chip — so a conference abstract or
a company press release can never outrank a peer-reviewed paper, no matter how good it looks.
We rank a rigorous null result — a good trial showing that something does not
work — above an early positive finding. Someone deciding whether to buy a supplement is served by
that, and the rigour is already counted by the design and journal components.
The score is computed from the published data alone and is
reproducible: the same file always yields the same numbers.
See the whole rubric drawn out →
— four charts covering all 27,780 studies: how the scores are spread and where the cap
bites, which of the 20 components the library is strong and weak on, which subjects rest on
stronger evidence, and what kinds of study each subject is actually built from.