Delirium as the first clinical presentation of the coronavirus disease 2019 in an older adult

Abstract

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) outbreak, which started in China in December 2019 and spread all over the world, affects people from all age groups, but it is more fatal in the elderly. The most common clinical presentations of COVID‐19 in the elderly are fever, dry cough, and chest distress, with a frequency of 94.5%, 69.1%, and 63.9%, respectively. 1 However, many hospitals screened for COVID‐19 based on the presence of only fever and cough. Therefore, elderly patients with these symptoms did not necessarily meet the criteria for screening, although it is well known in geriatric practice that older people do not always have a fever response to infectious diseases. In elderly patients, common infections, such as pneumonia and urinary tract infections, sometimes present only as acute mental state changes such as latergia and confusion. 2 As with other infections, it is quite possible that COVID‐19 can have this type of atypical presentation, but there is not yet any relevant information in the literature. In published studies that have investigated the clinical findings of elderly patients with COVID‐19, atypical presentations have not been addressed. Here, we present a case of an elderly male patient with COVID‐19 who had atypical presentation.