Design and methods of the Hospital Elder Life Program (HELP), a multicomponent targeted intervention to prevent delirium in hospitalized older patients: efficacy and cost-effectiveness in Dutch health care

BACKGROUND: The Hospital Elder Life Program (HELP) has been shown to be highly efficient and (cost-)effective in reducing delirium incidence in the USA. HELP provides multicomponent protocols targeted at specific risk factors for delirium and introduces a different view on care organization, with trained volunteers playing a pivotal role. The primary aim of this study is the quantification of the (cost-)effectiveness of HELP in the Dutch health care system. The second aim is to investigate the experiences of patients, families, professionals and trained volunteers participating in HELP. METHODS/DESIGN: A multiple baseline approach (also known as a stepped-wedge design) will be used to evaluate the (cost-) effectiveness of HELP in a cluster randomized controlled study. All patients aged 70 years and older who are at risk for delirium and are admitted to cardiology, internal medicine, geriatrics, orthopedics and surgery at two participating community hospitals will be included. These eight units are implementing the intervention in a successive order that will be determined at random. The incidence of delirium, the primary outcome, will be measured with the Confusion Assessment Method (CAM). Secondary outcomes include the duration and severity of delirium, quality of life, length of stay and the use of care services up to three months after hospital discharge. The experiences of patients, families, professionals and volunteers will be investigated using a qualitative design based on the grounded theory approach. Professionals and volunteers will be invited to participate in focus group interviews. Additionally, a random sample of ten patients and their families from each hospital unit will be interviewed at home after discharge. DISCUSSION: We hypothesize that HELP will reduce delirium incidence during hospital admission and decrease the duration and severity of delirium and length of hospital stays among these older patients, which will lead to reduced health care costs. The results of this study may fundamentally change our views on care organization for older patients at risk for delirium. The stepped-wedge design was chosen for ethical, practical and statistical reasons. The study results will be generalizable to the Dutch hospital care system, and the proven cost-effectiveness of HELP will encourage the spread and implementation of this program. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Netherlands Trial register: NTR384

Conjugacy and rigidity for nonpositively curved manifolds of higher rank

AbstractLet M and N be compact Riemannian manifolds with sectional curvature K ⩽ 0 such that M has dimension ⩾ 3 and rank ⩾ 2. If there exists a C0 conjugacy F between the geodesic flows of the unit tangent bundles of M and N, then there exists an isometry G: M → N that induces the same isomorphism as F between the fundamental groups of M and N

Design and methods of the Hospital Elder Life Program (HELP), a multicomponent targeted intervention to prevent delirium in hospitalized older patients: efficacy and cost-effectiveness in Dutch health care

Background The Hospital Elder Life Program (HELP) has been shown to be highly efficient and (cost-)effective in reducing delirium incidence in the USA. HELP provides multicomponent protocols targeted at specific risk factors for delirium and introduces a different view on care organization, with trained volunteers playing a pivotal role. The primary aim of this study is the quantification of the (cost-)effectiveness of HELP in the Dutch health care system. The second aim is to investigate the experiences of patients, families, professionals and trained volunteers participating in HELP. Methods/Design A multiple baseline approach (also known as a stepped-wedge design) will be used to evaluate the (cost-) effectiveness of HELP in a cluster randomized controlled study. All patients aged 70 years and older who are at risk for delirium and are admitted to cardiology, internal medicine, geriatrics, orthopedics and surgery at two participating community hospitals will be included. These eight units are implementing the intervention in a successive order that will be determined at random. The incidence of delirium, the primary outcome, will be measured with the Confusion Assessment Method (CAM). Secondary outcomes include the duration and severity of delirium, quality of life, length of stay and the use of care services up to three months after hospital discharge. The experiences of patients, families, professionals and volunteers will be investigated using a qualitative design based on the grounded theory approach. Professionals and volunteers will be invited to participate in focus group interviews. Additionally, a random sample of ten patients and their families from each hospital unit will be interviewed at home after discharge. Discussion We hypothesize that HELP will reduce delirium incidence during hospital admission and decrease the duration and severity of delirium and length of hospital stays among these older patients, which will lead to reduced health care costs. The results of this study may fundamentally change our views on care organization for older patients at risk for delirium. The stepped-wedge design was chosen for ethical, practical and statistical reasons. The study results will be generalizable to the Dutch hospital care system, and the proven cost-effectiveness of HELP will encourage the spread and implementation of this program

Parental longevity correlates with offspring’s optimism in two cohorts of community-dwelling older subjects

Dispositional optimism and other positive personality traits have been associated with longevity. Using a familial approach, we investigated the relationship between parental longevity and offspring’s dispositional optimism among community-dwelling older subjects. Parental age of death was assessed using structured questionnaires in two different population-based samples: the Leiden Longevity Study (n = 1,252, 52.2% female, mean age 66 years, SD = 4) and the Alpha Omega Trial (n = 769, 22.8% female, mean age 69 years, SD = 6). Adult offspring’s dispositional optimism was assessed with the Life Orientation Test—Revised (LOT-R). The association between parental age of death and levels of optimism in the offspring was analysed using linear regression analysis within each sample and a meta-analysis for the overall effect. In both samples, the parental mean age of death was positively associated with optimism scores of the offspring. The association remained significant after adjustment for age, gender, living arrangement, body mass index, smoking status, education and self-rated health of the offspring. The pooled B coefficient (increase in LOT-R score per 10-year increase in parental mean age of death) was 0.30 (SE = 0.08, p < 0.001). In conclusion, parental longevity was positively associated with optimism in adult offspring, suggesting a partial linked heritability of longevity and optimism

The Netherlands study of depression in older persons (NESDO); a prospective cohort study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>To study late-life depression and its unfavourable course and co morbidities in The Netherlands.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We designed the Netherlands Study of Depression in Older Persons (NESDO), a multi-site naturalistic prospective cohort study which makes it possible to examine the determinants, the course and the consequences of depressive disorders in older persons over a period of six years, and to compare these with those of depression earlier in adulthood.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>From 2007 until 2010, the NESDO consortium has recruited 510 depressed and non depressed older persons (≥ 60 years) at 5 locations throughout the Netherlands. Depressed persons were recruited from both mental health care institutes and general practices in order to include persons with late-life depression in various developmental and severity stages. Non-depressed persons were recruited from general practices. The baseline assessment included written questionnaires, interviews, a medical examination, cognitive tests and collection of blood and saliva samples. Information was gathered about mental health outcomes and demographic, psychosocial, biological, cognitive and genetic determinants. The baseline NESDO sample consists of 378 depressed (according to DSM-IV criteria) and 132 non-depressed persons aged 60 through 93 years. 95% had a major depression and 26.5% had dysthymia. Mean age of onset of the depressive disorder was around 49 year. For 33.1% of the depressed persons it was their first episode. 41.0% of the depressed persons had a co morbid anxiety disorder. Follow up assessments are currently going on with 6 monthly written questionnaires and face-to-face interviews after 2 and 6 years.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The NESDO sample offers the opportunity to study the neurobiological, psychosocial and physical determinants of depression and its long-term course in older persons. Since largely similar measures were used as in the Netherlands Study of Depression and Anxiety (NESDA; age range 18-65 years), data can be pooled thus creating a large longitudinal database of clinically depressed persons with adequate power and a large set of neurobiological, psychosocial and physical variables from both younger and older depressed persons.</p

C-reactive protein haplotypes and dispositional optimism in obese and nonobese elderly subjects

Background Chronic low-grade inflammation, characterized by elevated plasma levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), has been inversely associated with dispositional optimism. Using a Mendelian randomization design, this study explores whether CRP haplotypes that determine CRP plasma levels are also associated with dispositional optimism. Methods In a sample of 1,084 community-dwelling subjects (aged 60–85 years) from three cohort studies (Arnhem Elderly Study, n = 426; Leiden Longevity Study, n = 355; Zutphen Elderly Study, n = 303), six CRP polymorphisms (rs2808628, rs2808630, rs1205, rs1800947, rs1417938, and rs3091244) coding for five common haplotypes were genotyped. The association of CRP haplotypes with CRP plasma levels and dispositional optimism was analyzed using multivariable linear regression models. Subanalyses were stratified by body mass index (BMI =25 kg/m2). Results CRP haplotypes determined CRP plasma levels (adjusted ß = 0.094, p <0.001). In the whole group, no association was found between CRP haplotypes and dispositional optimism scores (adjusted ß = -0.02, p = 0.45). In BMI strata, CRP haplotypes were associated with increasing levels of plasma CRP levels (adjusted ß = 0.112; p = 0.002) and lower dispositional optimism levels (adjusted ß = -0.068; p = 0.03) in the obese group only. Conclusions These results suggest that genetically increased CRP levels are involved in low dispositional optimism, but only in case of obesit

Telomere Length and Mental Well-Being in Elderly Men from the Netherlands and Greece

Telomeres, repetitive DNA sequences that promote chromosomal stability, have been related to different measures of mental well-being and self-rated health, but mainly in women during adulthood. We aimed to investigate whether accelerated telomere shortening is associated with poor mental well-being and poor self-rated health in community-dwelling elderly men. Leukocyte telomere length was measured using quantitative PCR in two different samples of 203 elderly men (mean age 78 years) from the Netherlands in 1993, and 123 elderly men (mean age 84 years) from Greece in 2000. We also obtained follow-up data in 2000 from 144 Dutch subjects, of whom 75 had paired telomere length data in 1993 and 2000. Mental well-being was conceptualized as dispositional optimism, depressive symptoms, cognitive functioning, and loneliness. Linear regression analyses were used to study the association between telomere length, measures of mental well being, and self-rated health, while adjusting for potential confounders. In cross-sectional analyses, leukocyte telomere length was not associated with measures of mental well-being and self-rated health, neither in the Netherlands nor in Greece. Also, the rate of leukocyte telomere shortening (mean decrease: 0.28 kbp over 7 years) in the 75 Dutch participants with longitudinal data was not associated with changes in different measures of mental well-being and self-rated health. Thus, our results provide no support for a relationship between leukocyte telomere length and mental well-being in elderly community-dwelling men