I had a total hip replacement on march 12th. with a spinal block. I am 61 yrs old. At no point prior to the operation did anybody discuss the possibility of post operative dirlirium which can occur in up to 40% of operations depending on age the risk increases. I am not talking about being a little confused. I have no memory of anything that happened for the first 5 days after the operation.I was given a private room and a mattress on the floor because of the risk of throwing myself about. I wouldn't eat and I had no knowledge of where I was. I was in hospital for 10 days and continued to have very vivid and disturbing dreams for another week. The first thing I remember was hearing 2 junior doctors in the corridor discussing why I was on the floor and saying I had physchotic dementia. you can imagine my distress.
A year prior to this I had a perforated appendicitis/ septacimia and at the time I had a delirium lasting 4 or 5 hours believed to be caused by excessive fever and or morphine. this was not flagged up in my hospital notes.Delirium is a very serious condition which can result in permanent cognitive impairment. I am scared as to what the long term implications are.Has anybody else had this experience?
hello, I am so sorry to hear of your disturbing condition after your op, it's funny because I have just been reading about this. up to reading a report I had never heard of it before, it sounds dreadful, are you ok now and no side effects,I think it happens n about 1 in 10000.
hope your hip replacement has been successful though.
I wish you a speedy recovery.
lynn
This was mentioned to me as part of the anaesthetic discussion, it was said that the chances were lower with a spinal and lower still if no sedation was used. I agreed to spinal with sedation as 5 years ago I had an operation on my neck under general anaesthetic with no post-anaesthetic problems. An elderly lady operated on the same day as me had severe confusion for about 3 days and found it difficult to believe the operation had taken place but she was a high risk patient having a revision in her late 80s.
If other surgery takes place I would talk about the possibility of spinal block without sedation as you seem extra sensitive to at least one of the drugs involved.
Thank you both for your comments.If you google post operative delirium you will see that it is far more common than you think. Because I had already suffered delirium after appendicitis I was high risk my hospital notes were inadequate.It cost the NHS a lot of money I was in hospital for 10 days.I had a spinal block.It was very frightening when I was told what had happened. from the research I have done so far there is no cut and dried cause yes it could be morphine in duced or it might be a chemical imbalance in the brain or a metabolic endocrine problem. If I had been asked before the op about my previous experience however short lived of delirium then it might have been possible. So far my GP has not received adequate information concerning what happened and what drugs were used. I hope that at the 6 week medical I will learn more I also want to have some cognitive testing to see if there is any long lasting impairment.