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Neurocritical care

Critical illness, delirium and cognitive impairment

Survivors of critical illness can experience substantial morbidity long after the event. Recent findings provide further support that long-term cognitive impairment is frequent in these patients, and that in many cases, delirium due to encephalopathy has a causal role in its development.

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Figure 1: The complex relationship between critical illness, delirium and cognitive impairment.

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Acknowledgements

The author gratefully thanks Irene Zaal, Willemijn van der Kooi and Judy Veldhuijzen for their comments on a previous draft of the manuscript.

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Slooter, A. Critical illness, delirium and cognitive impairment. Nat Rev Neurol 9, 666–667 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrneurol.2013.235

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