Dr. Weeks’ Comment: Get a second opinion if your kids think you are senile…
Dementia is often misclassified when using brief cognitive assessments, largely due to test specific biases.
Predictors of dementia misclassification when using brief cognitive assessments
Janice M. Ranson, Elżbieta Kuźma, William Hamilton, Graciela Muniz-Terrera, Kenneth M. Langa, David J. Llewellyn
First published November 28, 2018, DOI: Article
Abstract
Background Brief cognitive assessments can result in false-positive and false-negative dementia misclassification. We aimed to identify predictors of misclassification by 3 brief cognitive assessments; the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), Memory Impairment Screen (MIS) and animal naming (AN).
Methods Participants were 824 older adults in the population-based US Aging, Demographics and Memory Study with adjudicated dementia diagnosis (DSM-III-R and DSM-IV criteria) as the reference standard. Predictors of false-negative, false-positive and overall misclassification by the MMSE (cut-point <24), MIS (cut-point <5) and AN (cut-point <9) were analysed separately in multivariate bootstrapped fractional polynomial regression models. Twenty-two candidate predictors included sociodemographics, dementia risk factors and potential sources of test bias.
Results Misclassification by at least one assessment occurred in 301 (35.7%) participants, whereas only 14 (1.7%) were misclassified by all 3 assessments. There were different patterns of predictors for misclassification by each assessment. Years of education predicts higher false-negatives (odds ratio [OR] 1.23, 95% confidence interval [95% CI] 1.07–1.40) and lower false-positives (OR 0.77, 95% CI 0.70–0.83) by the MMSE. Nursing home residency predicts lower false-negatives (OR 0.15, 95% CI 0.03–0.63) and higher false-positives (OR 4.85, 95% CI 1.27–18.45) by AN. Across the assessments, false-negatives were most consistently predicted by absence of informant-rated poor memory. False-positives were most consistently predicted by age, nursing home residency and non-Caucasian ethnicity (all p < 0.05 in at least 2 models). The only consistent predictor of overall misclassification across all assessments was absence of informant-rated poor memory.
Conclusions Dementia is often misclassified when using brief cognitive assessments, largely due to test specific biases.