Comparison of Cognitive Disorders in Dementia, Major Depressive Disorder and Alcohol Dependence Using the 7 Minute Screening Battery

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVES: 'The 7 Minute Screen' was reported so sensitive to discriminate mild dementia. The test results were not influenced by the education, age and sex. Furthermore, the examiners needed no professional training. The tests covered the cognitive areas such as memory, oritention to time, verbal fluency and visuospatial or visuoconstructional abilities. The aims of this study were to evaluate the efficiency of 'The 7 Minute Screen' to discriminate differences between illnesses, and to analyze the factors affecting the test results. METHODS: 'The 7 Minute Screen' and the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) were obtained from 36 inpatients with dementia of the Alzheimer's type (N=8), vascular dementia (N=8), Major depressive disorders (N=10) and alcohol dependence (N=10). The test battery was consisted of the Benton Temporal Orientation, the Enhanced Cued Recall, the Clock Drawing and the Category Fluency. RESULTS: 1) On the Benton Temporal Orientation, the highest mean scores were obtained in vascular dementia. On the memory, the lowest mean scores were obtained in vascular dementia, especially on the Uncued Recall in the dementia of the Alzheimer's type, and on the Cued Recall in vascular dementia. On the Clock Drawing, the lowest mean scores were obtained in the dementia of the Alzheimer's type. On the Category Fluency, the lowest mean scores were obtained in the dementia of the Alzheimer's type. 2) There was no statistically significant difference between 4 illness groups on the Benton Temporal Orientation. While there were no differences between 4 illness groups on total scores of memory and the Cued Recall, on the Uncued Recall showed significant difference between alcohol dependence and other illness groups (p<0.05). On the Clock Drawing, there was no significant difference between 4 illness groups. On the Category Fluency, there was significant difference between alcohol dependence and dementia of the Alzheimer's type and vascular dementia (p<0.001), and major depressive disorders (p<0.01). 3) In the dementia of the Alzheimer's type, the test scores of the Clocking Drawing were correlated positively with the education level (gamma=0.740, p<0.05), and negatively on the sex (gamma=-0.902, p<0.005), while in major depressive disorders, there was negative correlation between the Cued Recall and the age (gamma=-0.725, p<0.05). Otherwise, there were no significant correlation between the scores of individual tests with age, sex and educational level in vascular dementia and alcohol dependence. CONCLUSIONS: 'The 7 Minute Screen' seemed to be more superior to find out mild cognitive deficit than the Mini-Mental State Examination as well as it might be useful to discriminate differences between illnesses. However, some individual test results of a kind of illnesses could be influenced by the education level, age and sex.