O-DEM: a new cognitive screening in patients with hearing loss

Abstract

Hearing loss is asignificant risk factor for dementia. To date, cognitive impairment and dementia in patients with hearing impairment (HI) cannot be adequately diagnosed by commonly administered cognitive screening tests due to sensory impairments. Therefore, an adapted screening is needed. The aim of the present study was to develop and evaluate acognitive screening for people with HI. The new cognitive screening, called O‑DEM, entails aword fluency test, the Trail Making TestA (TMT-A), and asubtraction task. First, the O‑DEM was tested in alarge clinical sample (N = 2837) of people without subjective HI. In asecond step, the O‑DEM was evaluated in 213patients with objectively assessed HI and compared with the Hearing-Impaired Montreal Cognitive Assessment (HI-MoCA). The results indicate that the O‑DEM subtests significantly discriminate between participants with no, mild, and moderate to severe cognitive impairment. Based on the mean and standard deviation of the participants without cognitive impairment, atransformation of the raw scores was performed and atotal score with amaximum value of 10 was determined. In the second part of the study, the O‑DEM was shown to be as sensitive as the HI-MoCA in differentiating between people with and without cognitive impairment. Compared to other screenings, the O‑DEM is aquickly administrable screening for the detection of mild and moderate cognitive impairment in people with HI.