Publication:

Comparative study of 3 tests of cognitive impairment MMSE, AD-8, GPCOG in 200 geriatric cases suspected to have cognitive impairment out of 3750 screened

Background Dementia is a progressive decline in cognition, function, behavior and activities of daily living. Many assessment scales are used in screening for cognitive impairment, making diagnosis of dementia and for follow-up. Assessment scales in the domains of cognition, function, behavior, quality of life, depression in dementia, care giver burden and dementia severity are used. There are many tools used to assess cognitive function.

Methods Authors performed the 3 object recall, 3 name recall tests, and included care-giver’s opinion about the patient’s cognitive state as the primary screening test for cognitive impairment. After this, we tested it the patient (in whom any of the above three were impaired) with the MMSE, AD8 and GPCOG instruments.

Results The result were compared of each of the preliminary screening test to each of these three standard tools by applying statistical test (chi square).

Conclusions The screening tests and care giver's opinion about patient's condition (that take 2-3 minutes) have been shown to correlate with MMSE (8 minutes), AD8 (6 minutes), GPCOG (6-9 minutes). This saves the doctor’s, patient’s and caregiver’s time. The screening can be done by trained health worker, thus sparing the geriatrician to do more advanced patient related work.