Effectiveness of cognitive stimulation therapy (CST) on cognition, quality of life and neuropsychiatric symptoms for patients living with dementia: A meta-analysis

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IntroductionMany scholars have explored the effect of cognitive stimulation therapy (CST) on dementia patients, however, due to different experimental designs and insufficient sample sizes, research results are inconsistent. Furthermore, there is a scarcity of high-quality quantitative results. ObjectiveTo assess the effectiveness of CST for improving cognition, quality of life (QoL) and neuropsychiatric symptoms in people with dementia (PwD). MethodsChinese and English databases were searched for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) between establishment of and April 2022, with another search done in May 2022. Finally, 10 studies on the application of CST in PwD for improving cognition, QoL, behavior, language and activities of daily living were reviewed. ResultsBased on the results of the 10 RCTs, CST significantly improved cognitive performance (MMSE: WMD = 1.98, 95% CI: 1.24–2.72, P<0.01), QoL (WMD = 3.12, 95% CI: 2.52–3.72, P<0.01), language (NLT: WMD = 2.71, 95% CI: 1.07–4.35, P<0.01) and activities of daily living (DAD: WMD = 7.27, 95% CI: 0.97–13.56, P<0.01) in PwD. However, no significant improvements in ADAS-Cog (WMD = 0.55, 95% CI: -3.04–4.14, P = 0.76), depression (SMD = -0.12,95% CI: -0.29–0.04, P = 0.15), anxiety (RAID: WMD = -1.05, 95% CI: -3.85–1.75, P = 0.46) or neuropsychiatric symptoms (NPI: WMD = 0.23, 95% CI: -2.62–3.07, P = 0.88) were found. ConclusionCST improved the cognitive ability, QoL, language and activities of daily living of PwD. However, the effect of neuropsychiatric symptoms on PwD requires further exploration.