Constructing a Composite Score for the Seoul Neuropsychological Screening Battery-Core

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: The brief version of the Seoul Neuropsychological Screening Battery (SNSB), the SNSB-Core (SNSB-C), has been developed. Although each subtest score of the SNSB-C provides information on different features of broad cognitive functioning or impairment, a composite score is needed to identify the severity of global cognitive impairment. We aimed to develop and validate a composite score of the SNSB-C that would provide a normative-based summary score of global cognitive functioning, especially for differentiating patients with cognitive impairment from normal elderly. METHODS: A normative sample of 1067 elderly was used to develop a composite score of SNSB-C. The composite score was corrected for the effects of age, years of education, and sex by the regression method. Patients with Alzheimer's disease (n=41), vascular dementia (n=40), amnestic mild cognitive impairment (MCI) (n=73), vascular MCI (n=41), and Parkinson's disease with MCI (n=41) were differentiated from a normal sample (n=70) by the uncorrected and corrected composite scores using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis. RESULTS: Confirmatory factor analysis showed that the composite score equal weight to each standardized cognitive domain of SNSB-C is appropriate for indexing overall cognitive functioning. The corrected and uncorrected composite scores yielded a satisfactory size of the area under the ROC curve comparable to the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE). CONCLUSIONS: The composite scores of SNSB-C, especially the corrected score, provide an index of overall cognitive functioning, and they can be used as an alternative to MMSE for screening patients with cognitive impairment.

Relationship of Diabetic Polyneuropathy Severity with Various Balance Parameters

OBJECTIVE: To compare the balance parameters, the diabetes mellitus (DM) composite score representing the severity of diabetic polyneuropathy, and the neuropathy impairment score-lower limb (NIS-LL). METHOD: Thirty patients with DM were studied. Subjects were evaluated with nerve conduction study in upper and lower extremities, DM composite score, and NIS-LL, various balance parameters such as plantar pressure difference of both sides and unipedal standing time. The subjects who could not stand without support by any reasons were excluded. RESULTS: NIS-LL showed strong correlation with DM composite score (r(s)=0.683) and unipedal standing time (r(s)=0.663) (p0.05). CONCLUSION: NIS-LL was considered to have clinical usefulness in the evaluation of balance problems related to DM.