Reliability of NINDS-AIREN clinical criteria for the diagnosis of vascular dementia
Lopez, O.L.; Larumbe, M.R.; Becker, J.T.; Rezek, D.; Rosen, J.; Klunk, W.; DeKosky, S.T.
Neurology 44(7): 1240-1245
1994
ISSN/ISBN: 0028-3878 PMID: 8035923 Document Number: 432388
We evaluated the reliability of clinical diagnoses using the recently standardized criteria for the diagnosis of vascular dementia (VaD) developed by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) and the Association Internationale pour la Recherche et l'Enseignement en Neurosciences (AIREN). Two neurologists and two psychiatrists independently reviewed clinical data abstracted from those of 42 demented subjects participating in a longitudinal study of dementia at the University of Pittsburgh. For each patient we abstracted the clinical data on a standardized form. Each physician diagnosed each case according to the NINDS-AIREN criteria, using both clinical information and MRIs. We calculated the interrater agreement for all two-way combinations of clinicians with kappa statistics, which ranged from 0.46 (moderate agreement) to 0.72 (substantial agreement). The moderate reliability observed in this study may be attributable to patient-, clinician-, or criteria-centered sources of variance.