The SLU‐AMSAD, a short screening tool for diagnosing depression in dementia patients

Abstract

AbstractBackgroundThe prevalence of depression in people with Alzheimer’s disease is estimated to be nearly 50%, accounting for a significant amount of additional caregiver burden1. With the COVID‐19 crisis, depression in dementia patients, especially those living in long term care facilities, has increased. The Cornell Scale for Depression in Dementia (CSDD) is the gold standard for assessing depression in dementia patients, but is lengthy, taking nearly 20 minutes to administer3. The SLU AMSAD is a previously validated depression tool which consists of 5‐items and takes less than 2 minutes to administer3. The objective of this study was to compare this short tool with the lengthier gold standard, the CSDD, to diagnose depression in cognitively impaired patients.Method44 patients, 65years and older were enrolled in the study from an out‐patient clinic setting. A St. Louis University Mental Status Exam (SLUMS) score of less than 25 was used to include the eligible patients. All enrolled subjects were administered the SLUMS, SLU AMSAD and the CSDD. The SLUMS score was used to classify the patients as having mild, moderate and severe dementiaResultThe preliminary data set analyzed data for N=44 cases of which 54.5% were female and 88.6% Caucasian with a mean age of 79.9. The average SLUMS score was 14.3 (6.5). For the total sample, area under the curve (AUC), sensitivity, and specificity values exceeded 0.82, with a maximum sensitivity of 0.92 and specificity of 0.84 (for an optimal cut‐off score of 4/5).ConclusionThe SLU AMSAD had a very strong correlation with the CSDD as shown by the above results in this preliminary data sample of 44 patients. We intend to continue with the study and gather a total sample of 105 patients to add stronger statistical power to the study.