[Neuropsychological evaluation of advanced dementia: are cognitive assessment psychometric instruments useful? A systematic review].

Abstract

INTRODUCTION\nWe speak of advanced dementia when all the cognitive functions show a generalized and important affectation. In the course of advanced dementia it will be necessary to assess the suitability of the use or not of psychometric instruments.\n\n\nOBJECTIVE\nTo determine the utility of the psychometric instruments of cognitive assessment that determines the neuropsychological evaluation of advanced dementia. Through the research of studies of the databases PubMed, PsychInfo, MedLine and Cochrane. The searches combined terms of advanced dementia, cognitive evaluation and pshycometric tests. Ten studies were included in the research.\n\n\nDEVELOPMENT\nThe ten selected studies show how different psychometric tests can be used for the cognitive evaluation of patients with advanced dementia: SIB, SIB-s, M-OSPD, SCIP, SMMSE, mTSI and SIRS. Five of the ten studied the usefulness of these tests in their original version, and the remaining five verified the validity and reliability of the abbreviated versions of some of these tests.\n\n\nCONCLUSIONS\nThere are few scales that meet the appropriate psychometric characteristics to be able to carry out a cognitive evaluation effectively taking into account the difficulty that this poses for a person with severe dementia, but the instruments mentioned overcome the main limitations of other tools by presenting no effect ceiling and minimal floor effect.