Abstract

Dementia and significant cognitive decline are frequent sequelae of stroke, but are difficult to evaluate when aphasia and/or motor impairment are present. The linguistic and motor requirements of commonly employed screening tests render them problematic for use post-stroke. The present study examines the validity of the Nonverbal BriefScreen, a brief screening method with limited verbal and motor requirements, in groups of patients with known cognitive impairment using the MMSE as a gold standard. Participants were 137 healthy middle aged and older community dwellers, 21 patients with MCI/early dementia and 35 patients with different types of dementia. The sensitivity and specificity of the Nonverbal BriefScreen were calculated for various cutoff scores, with the MMSE as comparison. The Nonverbal BriefScreen was effective in discriminating between healthy controls and patients with dementia, as well as between healthy controls and all patients, with areas under the ROC curve similar to that of the MMSE. ROC analyses with a smaller sample of 35 age-matched healthy controls showed adequate discriminant ability to detect cognitive impairment. The Nonverbal BriefScreen was shown to be a valid method for screening for cognitive impairment that could be employed as a screening method for patients with limited language.

摘要

痴呆和显着的认知能力下降是中风的常见后遗症，但在出现失语和/或运动障碍时很难评估。常用筛选测试的语言和运动要求使它们在中风后使用时存在问题。本研究使用 MMSE 作为金标准，检查了非语言 BriefScreen 的有效性，这是一种具有有限语言和运动要求的简短筛查方法，用于已知认知障碍的患者组。参与者为 137 名健康的中老年社区居民、21 名 MCI/早期痴呆患者和 35 名不同类型的痴呆患者。Nonverbal BriefScreen 的敏感性和特异性针对各种截止分数进行了计算，并以 MMSE 作为比较。Nonverbal BriefScreen 可有效区分健康对照和痴呆患者，以及健康对照和所有患者，ROC 曲线下的面积与 MMSE 相似。对 35 名年龄匹配的健康对照者进行的较小样本的 ROC 分析显示出足够的辨别能力来检测认知障碍。Nonverbal BriefScreen 被证明是筛查认知障碍的有效方法，可用作语言受限患者的筛查方法。