Alzheimer-type dementia in a sample of Puerto Rican elderly: pilot study on the usefulness and assessment of a screening battery
Rodriguez Gómez, J.é; RodrÃguez BenÃtez, R.; González, M.; DÃaz, O.V.; Felici, M.
Boletin de la Asociacion Medica de Puerto Rico 104(2): 54-63
2012
ISSN/ISBN: 0004-4849 PMID: 23882975 Document Number: 702303
Dementia is one of the most prevalent conditions in the elderly. Dementia is defined as a decrease in memory, thinking and reasoning having its most common form as Alzheimer dementia. Alzheimer dementia (AD) economic cost to society is around 100 billion dollars annually. Unfortunately, at this point Puerto Rico, have neuro-psychopathology instruments limitations to perform valid and sensitive screening of DA. This study was directed to evaluate a battery of neuropsychological screening instruments for Puerto Rican elderly (60 to 100 years, n = 50) with Alzheimer's dementia. In addition, calculate the sensitivity and specificity of the instruments. The tests where composed as screening battery and included CERAD (Instruments created by the Consortium to Establish a Registry for Alzheimer's Disease), MMSE (Mini mental Status Evaluation), EIWA-III (specifically the digit retention and similarities subtest that try to evaluated memory, concentration and abstract thinking) and the Tuokkos' test (clock drawing in order to evaluated visual-constructional skills). As show by ROC Curve (Receiver Operating Characteristic Curve) for our research, the sensitivity for CERAD was 95.7% with an specificity of 49%; MMSE (Mini Mental Status Evaluation) account for 89 sensitivity and 60% specificity; EIWA-III and subtest (specifically the digit retention and similarities subtest) respectively was 80.4% sensitivity and 44.7% specificity; and sensitivity of 82.6% and specificity of 44.7%. Tuokkos' Clock Test accounted for 76.1% sensitivity, and 23.4% specificity. Reported indexes were within acceptable limits for screening tests. We suggest a sample increment and new testing with additional instruments.