We found moderate-quality evidence that postoperative cognitive dysfunction at three months could be reduced in these patients. 5 key findings →
Participants: 2,929 Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
Research
27,380 Alzheimer's and dementia studies in plain English, each scored out of 100.
Evidence suggests that delirium is associated with long-term poor outcome but delirium often occurs in individuals with more severe underlying disease. 5 key findings →
Design: meta-analysis Participants: 714 Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Full text may need a subscription
We aimed to synthesise data on risk factors for incident delirium and where possible conduct meta-analysis of these. 4 key findings →
Design: systematic review Participants: 411 Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
There is moderate-certainty evidence regarding the benefit of multicomponent non-pharmacological interventions for the prevention of delirium in hospitalised adults, estimated to reduce incidence by 43% compared to usual care. 4 key findings →
Design: meta-analysis Participants: 22 Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
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
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
A total of 21,788 citations were screened, and seven studies of diverse quality were included in the review, comprising 1,691 participants. 3 key findings →
Design: systematic review Participants: 1,691 Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
78/100
We sought to determine the frequency and prognosis of persistent delirium (PerD) in older hospital patients by systematically reviewing original research on this topic. 3 key findings →
Design: meta-analysis Participants: 1,322 Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
Patients possessed above risk factors might be high-risk patients. 3 key findings →
Participants: 104,572 Evidence: low
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
These findings suggested high prevalence and detrimental impact of DSD in hospitalized older adults, highlighting a need for early identification, prevention, and treatments. 3 key findings →
Design: systematic review Participants: 81 Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
Main results We included 39 trials that recruited 16,082 participants, assessing 22 different interventions or comparisons. 4 key findings →
Participants: 39 Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
Exogenous low dose melatonin administered nightly to elderly patients admitted to acute care may represent a potential protective agent against delirium. 3 key findings →
Participants: 145 Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
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
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
This pilot study was unable to demonstrate a benefit for donepezil in preventing or treating delirium in a relatively young and cognitively-intact group of elderly patients undergoing elective orthopedic surgery. 2 key findings →
Participants: 80 Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
In the primary analysis, limiting the level of sedation provided no significant benefit in reducing incident delirium. 5 key findings →
Participants: 73 Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
The experimental paradigm was feasible and acceptable. 3 key findings →
Design: randomized controlled trial Participants: 95 Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
Delirium in the elderly appears to have a poor prognosis. 3 key findings →
Design: meta-analysis Participants: 573 Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
Our evaluation study suggests that prophylactic treatment with low dose haloperidol in critically ill patients with a high risk for delirium probably has beneficial effects. 5 key findings →
Design: randomized controlled trial Participants: 299 Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
Among patients with agitated delirium receiving mechanical ventilation in the intensive care unit, the addition of dexmedetomidine to standard care compared with standard care alone (placebo) resulted in more ventilator-free hours at 7 days. 5 key findings →
Participants: 39 Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
74/100
Of 275 patients, 51 (18.5%) had persistent coma and died in the hospital. 2 key findings →
Design: cohort study Participants: 275 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
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
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source Free full text
The use of light propofol sedation decreased the prevalence of postoperative delirium by 50% compared with deep sedation. 3 key findings →
Design: randomized controlled trial Participants: 114 Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
The evidence base on tools for detection of delirium superimposed on dementia is limited, although some existing tools show promise. 1 key finding →
Design: systematic review Participants: 1,569 Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
Faster alleviation of delirium and improved cognition justify good, comprehensive geriatric care for these patients although treatment produced no significant improvements in hard endpoints of prognosis. 4 key findings →
Participants: 87 Evidence: high
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
Of 504 enrolled patients, 491 completed POD assessment (mean [SD] age, 68.4 [8.3] years; 385 [78.4%] male), of whom 106 (21.6%) developed POD. 5 key findings →
Design: cohort study Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
Delirium was associated with a higher risk of nursing home admission in participants without dementia (SHR 1.23, 95% CI 1.14-1.34) and with pre-existing dementia (SHR 1.22, 95% CI 1.07-1.38). 5 key findings →
Design: cohort study Participants: 13 Evidence: moderate
Full summary, score breakdown and related studies → Original source
Where “Free full text” comes from
Free full text links and the Full text may need a subscription label come from Unpaywall, Europe PMC and OpenAlex records of free copies, checked 10 Oct 2026. A study with neither is unknown, not paywalled. Show only studies that are free to read
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 27,380 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.
What this library is — and isn't
This is a large sample of the Alzheimer's literature, not an exhaustive index of it. It holds 27,380 records, built mostly from automated pulls of Europe PMC (60.6% of the library) and OpenAlex (18.6%), plus smaller pulls from PubMed, Crossref and medRxiv. If a study, a drug, or a finding isn't here, that is not evidence it doesn't exist in the literature — it may simply not have been pulled in yet.
1,032 records (3.8% of the library) are not peer-reviewed — 962 of those are preprints posted before any journal review, and the rest are conference abstracts, regulatory notices and reports. Every study card on this page states its status plainly, and the score above is capped for anything that isn't a peer-reviewed article.
See the full, machine-readable breakdown of this library's coverage →