Abstract

FRANCO, José Gabriel et al. Prevalence of psychiatric disorders in medical-surgical hospitalized patients in the Clinica Universitaria Bolivariana from Medellín, Colombia. Colomb. Med. [online]. 2005, vol.36, n.3, pp.186-193. ISSN 1657-9534.

INTRODUCTION: There is a high prevalence of psychiatric disorders among hospitalized patients reported in medical literature. OBJECTIVE: The consultation-liaison psychiatry group had the purpose of determinate the frequency of psychiatric disorders in hospitalized patients in the internal medicine, surgery, gynecology and orthopedics services in the Clínica Universitaria Bolivariana. METHODS: We present a descriptive observational study of 157 patients randomly interviewed over a 30 day period. A form was designed with questions including sociodemographic and clinical aspects and it was applied to all the interviewed ones. We administered the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE 35) to all the patients. If it did not detect any psychiatric disorder then a Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) was applied. Those with alterations in the MMSE 35 or the HADS had a clinical interview made in order to diagnose the existing psychiatric disorder. RESULTS: 70 (44.5%) patients were diagnosed with some psychiatric disorder. The most frequent being dementia n= 19 (12.1 %) followed by depressive disorder n= 16 (10.2 %). CONCLUSIONS: There is a high frequency of psychiatric disorders in hospitalized patients of Clínica Universitaria Bolivariana (44.5%) that are not diagnosed by non- psychiatrist medical staff. We suggest to plan actualization journeys on psychiatry for the medical and paramedical staff of this institution and also to create research lines on liaison psychiatry in other medical centers in Medellín city.

Keywords : Dementia; Depression; Delirium; Prevalence; Liaison psychiatry; Hospitalized patient; Psychiatric treatment; Psychosomatic.

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