Alzheimer's Disease Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Alzheimer's Disease, including details on diagnosis, memory loss, heredity, treatment, medication.

Diagnostic accuracy of mini-mental status examination and revised hasegawa dementia scale for Alzheimer's disease.

Kim KW, Lee DY, Jhoo JH, Youn JC, Suh YJ, Jun YH, Seo EH, Woo JI

Department of Neuropsychiatry, Seoul National University Bundang Hospital, Seongnam-si, Gyeonggi-do, Korea.

To compare the diagnostic accuracies of the Revised Hasegawa Dementia Scale (HDS-R) and Mini-Mental Status Examination (MMSE) for Alzheimer's diseases (AD), we administered them simultaneously to 82 AD patients and 82 age- and sex-matched nondemented control subjects. The area under the receiver operator curve (AUC) for AD of the HDS-R (AUC(HDS-R)) and MMSE (AUC(MMSE)) were bigger than 0.90 indicating that both tests are useful for detecting AD. However, AUC(HDS-R) (0.952) was significantly larger than that of the AUC(MMSE )(0.902) regardless of the educational level of the subjects, indicating that the HDS-R is more accurate than MMSE in diagnosing AD. Moreover, the superiority of the HDS-R (AUC(HDS-R) = 0.894) to the MMSE (AUC(MMSE) = 0.704) remained significant in mild AD patients alone, who are the focus of screening. In conclusion, the HDS-R is better than the MMSE as a screening instrument for AD.

Published 2 May 2005 in Dement Geriatr Cogn Disord, 19(5): 324-30.
Full-text of this article is available online (may require subscription).

© 2004-2008 Alzheimer's Disease Research Today. All Rights Reserved.