Usefulness of Family-Report Screening Tests for Dementia

OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this study was to examine the usefulness of domestic family-report screening tests for dementia in an effort to lay the foundation for a standardization of self-report dementia screening tests. METHODS: The subjects in this study were 56 psychiatrists and neurologists etc. who were members of the Korean Geriatrics Society and Korean Association for Geriatric psychiatry and in charge of demented elderly people. RESULTS: Out of 56 respondents, 31 rated SDQ or a short form of SDQ as useful. 10 doctors replied that there was no need to put dementia screening tests for caregivers to use, and the reason was that those tests for caregivers lagged behind screening tests for patients in usefulness, or that no separate assessment through caregivers would be necessary if it's possible to evaluate patients themselves. CONCLUSION: There is little accurate information on the usefulness or results of family-report screening tests for dementia, and sustained research efforts should be dedicated to this field.

A Short form of the Samsung Dementia Questionnaire ( S-SDQ ): development and cross-validation

BACKGROUND: The Samsung Dementia Questionnaire (SDQ) has recently been developed for screening dementia. Objectives of this study are to develop a short form of SDQ (S-SDQ) and to cross-validate S-SDQ in a new sample. METHODS: Factorial analysis of SDQ items was used to develop the S-SDQ. The S-SDQ was administered to informants of 100 dementia patients (61 Alzheimer's disease, 39 vascular dementia) and to those of 100 hospital control subjects. Two groups were matched in terms of age and sex. The retest of S-SDQ was conducted in 75 informants to determine the reliability of tests and retests which were spanned average 23.9 days. RESULTS: The S-SDQ was not influenced by education, age or sex. S-SDQ scores negatively correlated with the K-MMSE (r=-0.84). The S-SDQ showed stepwise scaling with dementia severity. The area under the ROC curve for the S-SDQ was 0.974 (S.E.=0.084). With respect to a diagnosis of dementia, the SDQ (cut-off point 8) had a sensitivity of 94% and a specificity of 90%. The S-SDQ was found to have a high test-retest reliability (r=0.97). CONCLUSIONS: An abbreviated version of SDQ (S-SDQ) had high sensitivity, specificity and test-retest reliability which were comparable to those of original SDQ. Thus, the S-SDQ can be a useful, brief dementia screening questionnaire.