Delirium and Long-Term Cognitive Trajectories in Cognitively Unimpaired Adults.

Delirium within 30 days of hospitalization in cognitively unimpaired adults in the Mayo Clinic Study of Aging is linked to higher incident MCI (aHR 3.67) and dementia (aHR 5.39).

• Why it matters: Delirium is common during hospitalization and tied to poor outcomes, but its relationship to later cognitive trajectories and progression to MCI or dementia is not fully defined.
• What they did: In a Mayo Clinic Study of Aging cohort from 2004–2023 (n=3501 with at least one hospitalization; 75 with delirium), delirium was identified from clinical notes using a validated NLP algorithm and modeled as time-dependent; Cox models adjusted for age, sex, education, and APOE ε4, and longitudinal cognition used linear mixed-effects models.
• The result: Over a median 7.2 years of follow-up, delirium was associated with increased risk of MCI and dementia and with accelerated decline on repeated cognitive testing.

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