Question:medium
What differentiates delirium from dementia?
What differentiates delirium from dementia?
Show Hint
Onset is the key - acute and fluctuating versus slowly progressive.
Updated On: Jun 23, 2026
- Confusion
- Difficulty in communicating
- Hallucination
- Sudden change
Show Solution
The Correct Option is D
Solution and Explanation
Step 1: Treat this as a discriminator question - eliminate any option that is common to both disorders and keep the one that is uniquely characteristic of delirium.
Step 2: Both syndromes can present with disorientation, communication difficulty, and even perceptual disturbances such as hallucinations, so options (a), (b), and (c) fail to separate them.
Step 3: The decisive axis is the $temporal$ profile. Dementia is chronic and creeps in over months to years; delirium erupts acutely over hours to days, waxes and wanes through the day, and is marked by an abrupt deviation from the person's usual cognition.
Step 4: Because abrupt onset with fluctuating inattention defines delirium against the slow decline of dementia, the differentiating feature is the sudden change.
\[\boxed{\text{Sudden change}}\]
Step 2: Both syndromes can present with disorientation, communication difficulty, and even perceptual disturbances such as hallucinations, so options (a), (b), and (c) fail to separate them.
Step 3: The decisive axis is the $temporal$ profile. Dementia is chronic and creeps in over months to years; delirium erupts acutely over hours to days, waxes and wanes through the day, and is marked by an abrupt deviation from the person's usual cognition.
Step 4: Because abrupt onset with fluctuating inattention defines delirium against the slow decline of dementia, the differentiating feature is the sudden change.
\[\boxed{\text{Sudden change}}\]
Was this answer helpful?
0
