THE EFFICIENCY OF TREATING DELIRIUM WITH PSYCHOTROPIC DRUGS: AN INTEGRATIVE REVIEW

Abstract

Psychotropic drugs are part of a group of medications used in the treatment of conditions that affect mental health anxiety disorder, depression, insomnia, psychotic disorders, delirium, prescribed according to the diagnosis, patient characteristics, risks and benefits and, in most cases, are prescribed in the treatment in conjunction with psychotherapy, changing the conduct, perception and consciousness. Delirium is the acute, transient and usually reversible disorder, having a fluctuating course with cognitive alteration, as well as disturbance of attention and consciousness. The objective of this study is an integrative literature review to understand the efficacy of the use of psychotropic drugs in patients in delirium, with a degree of frailty and advanced comorbidity, given the caution that is necessary for the use of antipsychotics, since they can cause adverse effects in the patient. For the elaboration of this study there was a search through the National Library of Medicine PubMed and Cochrane databases through the descriptors "antipsychotic", "delirium". This integrative review was constituted through the following steps: delimitation of the theme; definition of inclusion and exclusion criteria; removal of data from articles; studies obtained; analysis of the studies as well as the elaboration of the results. Articles published in the last 10 years 2013-2023 were used as inclusion criteria; clinical trial; controlled clinical trial and free articles. As exclusion criteria of the articles had duplicate studies and no relation to the theme. This work resulted in a total search of 2,209 articles. A total of 2,132 articles were found in the PubMed database and 77 articles in the Cochrane database. After applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria, 22 articles were selected in the PubMed database and 3 articles in Cochrane, with 10 clinical trials, 12 controlled clinical trials, all articles are free texts and published in the last 10 years. It is concluded that there is efficacy in the use of psychotropic drugs in patients in delirium, but there is a need for caution in this use, because these psychotropic drugs cause adverse reactions to the patient.