**7.1 Causal therapy**

Clinical and physical assessment including appropriate laboratory and radiological investigations can help identify the cause of the delirium. Moreover, rapid recognition and treatment of the underlying cause can often avoid resorting to more complex symptomatic pharmacological and non-pharmacological strategies. Treatment of the underlying cause may include:


For evaluating the delirogenic potential of drugs, optimizing the medication use, the DEL-FINE score can be used. Drugs (and drug withdrawal) are assigned a score ranging from "three =strong delirogenic potential" to "zero =no delirogenic potential". For instance, a score of three is assigned to amitriptyline, atropine, clomipramine, and the withdrawal of benzodiazepines, ethanol, and opioids [26].

Nevertheless, the causal treatments can often be difficult as, even when the root cause is identified, it cannot be reversible. Therefore, symptomatic treatments are often used. These treatments include pharmacological therapy and non-pharmacological strategies.
