Chinese Version of the Baylor Profound Mental Status Examination: A Brief Staging Measure for Patients with Severe Alzheimer's Disease.

Abstract

A specialized instrument for assessing the cognition of patients with severe Alzheimer's disease (AD) is needed in China. To validate the Chinese version of the Baylor Profound Mental Status Examination (BPMSE-Ch). The BPMSE is a simplified scale which has proved to be a reliable and valid tool for evaluating patients with moderate to severe AD, it is worthwhile to extend the use of it to Chinese patients with AD. Patients were assessed from the Memory Clinic Outpatient. All participants were diagnosed as having probable AD by assessment. The BPMSE was translated into Chinese and back translated. The BPMSE-Ch was administered to 102 AD patients with a Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) score below 17. We assessed the internal consistency, reliability, and construct validity between the BPMSE-Ch and MMSE, Severe Impairment Battery (SIB), Global Deterioration Scale (GDS-1), Geriatric Depression Scale(GDS-2), Instrumental Activities of Daily Living (IADL), Physical Self-Maintenance Scale (PSMS), Neuropsychiatric Inventory (NPI) and Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR). The BPMSE-Ch showed good internal consistency (α = 0.87); inter-rater and test-retest reliability were both excellent, ranging from 0.91 to 0.99. The construct validity of the measure was also supported by significant correlations with MMSE, SIB. Moreover, as expected, the BMPSE-Ch had a lower floor effect than the MMSE, but a ceiling effect existed for patients with MMSE scores above 11. The BPMSE-Ch is a reliable and valid tool for evaluating cognitive function in Chinese patients with severe AD.