DemTect®– effective to asses MCI and dementia – validation study of the Polish language version

Abstract

Objectives: To validate DemTect®, a highly sensitive psychometric screening tool – designed to identify patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and patients with dementia (AD).Method: A prospective cohort/cross-sectional study was designed. The data were collected from a group of 224 subjects, including 85 patients with MCI, 109 with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and 30 healthy control (HC) subjects. All subjects underwent a detailed neuropsychological assessment including CT, the assessment of biological parameters and a psychometric examination using DemTect®, MMSE, TYM, CDT and FAS.Results: Subjects ranged in age from 55 to 94 years, with a mean age of 71.42 ± 9.86 years. Classification rates of DemTect® were superior for both the MCI and AD groups compared with the MMSE, with high sensitivities of 90% (cut-off ≤15) and 96.8% (cut-off < 10), respectively. The DemTect® Polish language version proved to be independent of age and education level.Conclusion: The Polish language version of the DemTect® scale is easy to administer. It may be seen as a superior cognitive screening tool in day-to-day practice as it achieves more accurate differentiation between HC/MCI/AD compared with MMSE.