title: Validity of the Italian telephone version of the mini-mental state examination in the elderly healthy population.
abstract: The biggest challenge regarding cognitive prospective evaluations in the elderly is the identification of subjects that go on to develop cognitive impairment. In this study, we compared the Italian telephone version of the MMSE (Itel-MMSE) with both the MMSE and a battery of neuropsychological tests in a group of 107 healthy elderly subjects. The aim of the study was to identify a subset of subjects who, despite having an overall score within the normal range, performed poorly in the cognitive neuropsychological evaluation. The Itel-MMSE score showed a good internal consistency as well as a significant correlation with the MMSE score, age and education. A score of < or = 21 on the Itel-MMSE was the score which reflected the highest degree of sensitivity in the neuropsychological tests. There was a statistically significant difference between subjects with an Itel-MMSE score of < or = 21 and those with a score of 22 in age, education, Attentional Matrices and Copying Drawings. Despite some potential limitations, our results strongly suggest that the Itel-MMSE may be used as a screening test to identify healthy elderly subjects whose cognitive performance is poor.
authors.affiliation: National Centre of Epidemiology, National Institute of Health, Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: Nicola
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Vanacore
authors.forename: Antonella
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: De Carolis
authors.forename: Micaela
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Sepe-Monti
authors.forename: Giuseppe
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Bomboi
authors.forename: Antonia
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Stazi
authors.forename: Angelo
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Bianchetti
authors.forename: Franco
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Giubilei
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007406:Interview, Psychological / Q000379:methods*; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D007558:Italy; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D012307:Risk Factors; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity