title: The screening of mild dementia with a shortened Spanish version of the "Informant Questionnaire on Cognitive Decline in the Elderly".
abstract: Most of the present screening tests for the detection of dementia fail with mild dementia. Jorm et al. recently presented the Informant Questionnaire on Cognitive Decline in the Elderly (IQCODE), a simple instrument with good diagnostic validity that uses a close relative to obtain information on the cognitive decline of a patient. We used a Spanish adaptation of this questionnaire (S-IQCODE) validated in a population-based sample, and a shortened form (SS-IQCODE) obtained after analyzing the items and reducing them to only 17. The S-IQCODE and the SS-IQCODE have greater diagnostic validity for mild dementia than the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) (sensitivity: 86% for both versus 57%; specificity: 92 and 91% versus 84%, positive predictive value: 54 and 50% versus 29%; negative predictive value: 91 and 90% versus 81%) and, unlike the MMSE, are independent of the age, education, and previous intelligence of the subjects. According to the results of this study, the SS-IQCODE could be a useful screening test for the detection of mild dementia in the Spanish-speaking aged population, with greater diagnostic power and less contamination by independent variables than the MMSE.
authors.affiliation: Hospital 12 de Octubre, Madrid, Spain.
authors.forename: J M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Morales
authors.forename: J I
authors.initials: JI
authors.lastname: Gonzalez-Montalvo
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Bermejo
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Del-Ser
mesh_terms: D000203:Activities of Daily Living / Q000145:classification / Q000523:psychology; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000145:classification / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D003704:Dementia / Q000145:classification / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D015577:Geriatric Assessment; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D008609:Mental Status Schedule / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011340:Problem Solving; D011594:Psychometrics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results