Presentation Master's Thesis - Marije van Beek - Clinical Neuropsychology

Few studies investigated whether cognitive screeners can differentiate between dementia, mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and no cognitive impairment in young patients. Therefore, this study examined the differential use of cognitive screeners in patients under the age of 70. The data was gathered retrospectively from the medical files of patients referred to a general memory clinic. Patients diagnosed with dementia (n = 42), MCI (n = 35) and no cognitive impairment (n = 62) were included if they completed the Seven Minute Screen (7MS), Frontal Assessment Battery (FAB), Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), and/or Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE). ROC-analyses were performed to evaluate the use of cognitive screeners (7MS, FAB, MoCA) in differentiating between dementia, MCI and no cognitive impairment. Logistic regression-analyses were performed to evaluate the combination of cognitive screeners in differentiating between dementia and no cognitive impairment. All screeners were found to be effective in differentiating between dementia and no cognitive impairment, and between MCI and no cognitive impairment (AUC > 0.7). Only the 7MS was found to be effective in differentiating between dementia and MCI (AUC = .748). A combination of the screeners was more effective than the single cognitive screener use (p = .003). Our findings suggest that cognitive screeners are useful for differentiating between no cognitive impairment and dementia. For the differentiation between MCI and no cognitive impairment, and MCI and dementia, we suggest an extensive work-up to be more valuable (i.e. neuropsychological assessment), as our results show moderate to small effects for the cognitive screeners.