Controlled trials of delirium

Abstract

We are thankful to Tahir et al. [1] for their interest in our paper in which we described a randomised controlled trial (RCT) that compared olanzapine, risperidone and haloperidol for treatment of delirium in a general hospital setting [2]. We agree with the observation of Tahir et al. [1] that a placebo controlled trial published by their group was missed in the introduction section of the paper. The trial of Hu et al. [3] had a control group besides the 2 active groups, i.e., a haloperidol group and an olanzapine group. The control group did not receive any antipsychotic medication. Regarding 2 other trials pointed out by Tahir et al. [1], it should be understood that our background information was limited to the data with respect to antipsychotic and not for rivastigmine. Further the study by Kim et al. [4], was included in our background information as a trial comparing 2 antipsychotics. With regard to noninclusion of 10 subjects in the analysis in our trial, we have mentioned that out of these 10 patients, no single follow-up data was available for 6 patients; hence, these patients were not included in the analysis. For other 4 patients, data was available for only 2 assessments, and these patients left the hospital prematurely due to various reasons. Although statistical methods like last observation carried forward (LOCF), can be used to incorporate the data of partial completers or survival analysis can be used to include the data of such patients, we did not consider the same because the reason for dropout in this trial was not related to the medications per se.