Brief Test May Aid Dementia Diagnosis

By Charles Bankhead, Staff Writer, MedPage Today Published: November 08, 2010 Reviewed by Robert Jasmer, MD; Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco. Action Points   Explain to interested patients that a 16-item cognitive assessment tool demonstrated 99% sensitivity for diagnosing cognitive impairment in a 700-patient cohort with known cognitive status. Note that the test studied, known as the "Sweet 16," had a high correlation with the Mini-Mental State Examination and performed as well or better than the MMSE in several comparisons. A 16-item cognitive assessment tool demonstrated 99% sensitivity for diagnosing cognitive impairment in a 700-patient cohort with known cognitive status, investigators reported. The "Sweet 16" test had a high correlation with the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) and performed as well or better than the MMSE in several comparisons. Developers plan to make the test freely available via the Internet. "We have successfully developed and validated a cognitive assessment instrument that is efficient and simple; requires no pen, paper, or other props to administer; and will be available open access," Tamara G. Fong, MD, PhD, of Harvard and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, and co-authors wrote in an article published online in Archives of Internal Medicine./.../