Sex-stratified analyses of comorbidities associated with an inpatient delirium diagnosis using real world data

Delirium is a detrimental mental condition often seen in older, hospitalized patients and is currently hard to predict. In this study, we leverage electronic health records (EHR) to identify 7,492 UCSF patients and 19,417 UC health system patients with an inpatient delirium diagnosis and the same number of control patients without delirium. We found significant associations between comorbidities or laboratory values and an inpatient delirium diagnosis, including metabolic abnormalities and psychiatric diagnoses. Some associations were sex-specific, including dementia subtypes and infections. We further explored the associations with anemia and bipolar disorder by conducting longitudinal analyses from the time of first diagnosis to development of delirium, demonstrating a significant relationship across time. Finally, we show that an inpatient delirium diagnosis leads to increased risk of mortality. These results demonstrate the powerful application of the EHR to shed insights into prior diagnoses and laboratory values that could help predict development of inpatient delirium and the importance of sex when making these assessments.