Abstract
Objectives
Along with deficit of attention, level of arousal is a primary criterion for the diagnosis
of delirium. The Observational Scale of Level of Arousal (OSLA) is a quick, simple,
and observational instrument used to evaluate the variation of arousal for rapid screening
of delirium in clinical practice. The current study aims to perform a cross-cultural
adaption of and to validate the Italian version of the OSLA scale to detect delirium
in older aged, hospitalized patients.
Design
Longitudinal study.
Setting and Participants
In hospital and transitional care setting. Old age patients.
Methods
A cross-cultural adaptation of the OSLA from English into Italian was conducted, including
back-translation. The validation of the OSLA was assessed in 116 older patients (age
>65 years) admitted to geriatric, internal medicine, and transitional care wards.
The 4 “A”s Test serves as the gold standard for the measurement of delirium.
Results
Incident delirium was assessed longitudinally at different time points during hospitalization.
The Italian version of OSLA demonstrated adequate internal consistency, specificity,
sensitivity, agreement, test-retest reliability, and sensitivity to change, indicating
adequate its clinometric properties in the detection of delirium in a real world hospitalized
cohort of older adults.
Conclusions and Implications
The current study is among the few studies to assess arousal as a core feature of
delirium by virtue of a longitudinal assessment of delirium, moving a step forward
in the implementation of a brief and easy to use delirium-screening tool for the measurement
of important clinical outcomes in a frail, old aged hospitalized population.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: November 30, 2020
Footnotes
Lucia Martella and Luca Carmisciano contributed equally to this work.
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
Identification
Copyright
© 2020 AMDA - The Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine.
