Post-operative delirium happens when patients wake up from anesthesia. Patients experiencing
post-operative delirium are very confused, not being able to think or function "normally".
These patients are hard to take care of and they tend to have more dementia as they age
compared to patients who don't experience post-operative delirium. Intranasal insulin has
been shown to reverse confusion associated with Alzheimer's disease (humans) and AIDS (mice).
Intranasal insulin has been safely administered to 1092 patients in 38 different studies.
There were no cases of clinically low blood sugar and a few cases of mild nasal irritation
that happened also with salt water when the subjects received multiple intranasal doses.
No one has tried to reverse post-operative delirium with intranasal insulin. The delirium
associated with Alzheimer's Disease and AIDS have very similar symptoms and what happens in
the brain is very similar also.
The investigators intent is to administer intranasal insulin to patients exhibiting
post-operative delirium in order to reverse the symptoms because the investigators think that
the three disease states are closely related and intranasal insulin has had some success in
reversing the delirium in the other two disease states.