Th usefulness of the Mini-Mental State Examination in quantitative estimation of the severity of cognitive impairment in patients with multifocal vasogenic cerebral lesions
Jura, E.
Neurologia i Neurochirurgia Polska 27(3): 293-301
1993
ISSN/ISBN: 0028-3843 PMID: 8232729 Document Number: 406473
The material studied comprised 65 inpatients admitted to the Department of Cerebrovascular Diseases from January 1988 to September 1990. The patients had a history of multiple episodes of brain ischaemia confirmed by CT scan, and had clinical evidence of focal symptoms and signs clinically judged to the related to disturbances in cerebral circulation. The aim of this study was a comparison of usefulness of the Mini-Mental State Examination and other clinical screening scales in estimation of the cognitive impairment among these patients. We performed an analysis of the results on MMSE in the studied persons in comparison with the results in Dementia Scale (SD). The clinical stage of dementia was assessed by I part of the Brief Cognitive Rating Scale (BCRS). After the first selection material was divided into 2 groups: 1. group I (34 patients) included patients scoring 23 or less in the MMSE, 2. the remaining patients formed group II (31 persons). They scored 24 to 29 in the MMSE and complained about memory loss. The results of the SD and BCRS demonstrated the following: persons with high scores in the MMSE had intellectual impairment in other screening scales. The observations are consistent with the opinion of other authors. They do not doubt the usefulness the MMSE but regard it as an indicatory test for grading of cognitive impairment. They underlined the fact, that the majority of the patients even with higher scores in Mini-Mental State Examination may have moderate or even severe dementia.