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Cognitive Assessment and Reference Diagnosis System: development of a neuropsychological and clinical examination for clinic and population use
Author(s) -
SUH GukHee,
LEE Mi Ho
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
psychogeriatrics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.647
H-Index - 32
eISSN - 1479-8301
pISSN - 1346-3500
DOI - 10.1046/j.1479-8301.2003.00010.x
Subject(s) - dementia , neuropsychology , delirium , medical diagnosis , reliability (semiconductor) , neuropsychological assessment , vascular dementia , cognition , mini–mental state examination , population , psychology , neuropsychological test , medicine , clinical psychology , psychiatry , disease , pathology , environmental health , power (physics) , physics , quantum mechanics
Background: Recent therapeutic advances to delay the progression of dementia have renewed calls to improve the early detection and management of individuals with dementia. A new computerized neuropsychological interview and clinical examination, the Cognitive Assessment and Reference Diagnosis System (CARDS) was developed to incorporate in a single instrument all the information required to make an accurate clinical diagnosis of dementia (its subtype, depression and delirium), to present reference diagnoses following the completion of tests and to detect early dementia. This study aims to verify the validity and reliability of CARDS. Methods: The CARDS was administered to 70 dementia patients (51 Alzheimer's disease, 19 vascular dementia) and 34 healthy (control) subjects. Three aspects of reliability (internal consistency reliability, inter‐rater and test–retest reliability) were tested. Correlations with the Alzheimer's Disease Assessment Scale, Korean version (ADAS‐K), the Cambridge Cognitive Examination, Korean version (CAMCOG‐K) and the Mini‐Mental State Examination, Korean version (MMSE‐K) were used to estimate the concurrent validity of CARDS. To evaluate the sensitivity of CARDS, mean scores from CARDS, ADAS‐K, CAMCOG‐K and MMSE‐K were compared between dementia patients and control subjects. Results: The CARDS demonstrated high levels of reliability. Mean CARDS scores for dementia patients were significantly different from the control group ( P < 0.001). Furthermore, CARDS was significantly correlated with other tests and scales ( P < 0.01). Conclusion: We demonstrated that CARDS is a reliable and valid instrument not only for dementia diagnosis, but also for the evaluation of impaired cognitive domains. A regression equation, derived from nationwide population surveys for norm data from CARDS, will be applied for individualized cutoff scores of five domains of dementia to eliminate the influence of age, sex and educational attainment on test scores.