ArticleEuropean geriatric medicine2025
The effect of dexamethasone on the prevalence of delirium in older COVID-19 patients: a retrospective cohort study.
Article in European geriatric medicine, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
purposeCorticosteroids decrease mortality in patients with COVID-19 in need of oxygen therapy. However, corticosteroids are known to increase the risk of delirium in older patients. We studied whether dexamethasone increased the risk of delirium in older patients hospitalized with COVID-19.
methodsSingle centre, retrospective cohort study including patients ≥ 70 years hospitalized in a large teaching hospital with COVID-19 during the first (control group) and second wave (dexamethasone group, receiving dexamethasone) of the COVID-19 pandemic. Only patients on regular (non-ICU) wards were included. Delirium was defined as having a mean delirium observation screening (DOS)-score of ≥ 3 or having an altered mental state on day 3 of admission.
resultsWe included 233 patients. The mean age in the dexamethasone group was 78.83 years [SD 6.5] compared to 79.43 years [SD 6.3] in the control group. In the dexamethasone group (n = 114), less patients developed delirium compared to the control group (n = 119) on day 3 of admission (5.3% vs 15.1%; p = 0.01). The Odds ratio of dexamethasone use for delirium was 0.23 (95% CI 0.08-0.64).
conclusionIn this study, dexamethasone did not increase the risk of delirium in older patients with COVID-19.
Indexed as
Identifiers
39969802What Socratic holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.