Background: The increase in life expectancy worldwide has led to a larger population of older people, which in turn entails a rising prevalence of cancer. One of the main complications of cancer is delirium, especially in advanced stages.
Objective: To determine which delirium screening instrument is the most accurate in older people with cancer.
Methods: A systematic review was designed. A literature search was performed in MEDLINE, EBSCO and SCOPUS; additional records were identified by handsearching. Selection criteria were studies involving people with cancer and a mean sample age of 60 years or older, assessing delirium, and reporting the metric properties of the assessment instrument. Studies with post-surgical patients and substance abuse delirium were excluded.
Results: From 2001 to 2021, 14 eligible studies evaluated 13 different assessment tools, reporting an incidence of delirium ranging from 14.3% to 68.3%. The Delirium Observation Screening Scale (DOSS) showed the best metric properties, followed by the Nursing Delirium Screening Scale (NuDESC), Confusion Assessment Method (CAM) and Memorial Delirium Assessment Scale (MDAS). Only two studies were considered to be at low risk of bias using the QUADAS-2 Tool. No study exclusively examined this population group.
Conclusions: Screening tools for delirium are heterogeneous for older people with cancer, and there is a need to analyze metric properties exclusively in the older population. Registered on PROSPERO ID: CRD42022303530.
Keywords: accuracy; aged; assessment; cancer; delirium; incidence; prevalence; psychometric properties.