Anthony J. Perkins

Six-item screener to identify cognitive impairment among potential subjects for clinical research.

Objective. To design a brief cognitive screener with acceptable sensitivity and specificity for identifying subjects with cognitive impairment Design. Cohort one is assembled from a community-based survey coupled with a second-stage diagnostic evaluation using formal diagnostic criteria for dementia. Cohort two is assembled from referrals to a specialty clinic for dementing disorders that completed the same diagnostic evaluation. Setting. Urban neighborhoods in Indianapolis, Indiana and the Indiana Alzheimer Disease Center. Patients. Cohort one consists of 344 community-dwelling black persons identified from a random sample of 2212 black persons aged 65 and older residing in Indianapolis; cohort two consists of 651 subject referrals to the Alzheimer Disease Center. Measurements. Formal diagnostic clinical assessments for dementia including scores on the Mini-mental state examination (MMSE), a six-item screener derived from the MMSE, the Blessed Dementia Rating Scale (BDRS), and the Word List Recall. Based on clinical evaluations, subjects were categorized as no cognitive impairment, cognitive impairment-not demented, or demented. Results. The mean age of the community-based sample was 74.4 years, 59.4% of the sample were women, and the mean years of education was 10.1. The prevalence of dementia in this sample was 4.3% and the prevalence of cognitive impairment was 24.6%. Using a cut-off of three or more errors, the sensitivity and specificity of the six-item screener for a diagnosis of dementia was 88.7 and 88.0, respectively. In the same sample, the corresponding sensitivity and specificity for the MMSE using a cut-off score of 23 was 95.2 and 86.7. The performance of the two scales was comparable across the two populations studied and using either cognitive impairment or dementia as the gold standard. An increasing number of errors on the six-item screener is highly correlated with poorer scores on longer measures of cognitive impairment. Conclusions. The six-item screener is a brief and reliable instrument for identifying subjects with cognitive impairment and its diagnostic properties are comparable to the full MMSE. It can be administered by telephone or face-to-face interview and is easily scored by a simple summation of errors.

Monitoring Depression Treatment Outcomes With the Patient Health Questionnaire-9

Background:Although effective treatment of depressed patients requires regular follow-up contacts and symptom monitoring, an efficient method for assessing treatment outcome is lacking. We investigated responsiveness to treatment, reproducibility, and minimal clinically important difference of the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9), a standard instrument for diagnosing depression in primary care. Methods:This study included 434 intervention subjects from the IMPACT study, a multisite treatment trial of late-life depression (63% female, mean age 71 years). Changes in PHQ-9 scores over the course of time were evaluated with respect to change scores of the SCL-20 depression scale as well as 2 independent structured diagnostic interviews for depression during a 6-month period. Test-retest reliability and minimal clinically important difference were assessed in 2 subgroups of patients who completed the PHQ-9 twice exactly 7 days apart. Results:The PHQ-9 responsiveness as measured by effect size was significantly greater than the SCL-20 at 3 months (−1.3 versus −0.9) and equivalent at 6 months (−1.3 versus −1.2). With respect to structured diagnostic interviews, both the PHQ-9 and the SCL-20 change scores accurately discriminated patients with persistent major depression, partial remission, and full remission. Test-retest reliability of the PHQ-9 was excellent, and its minimal clinically important difference for individual change, estimated as 2 standard errors of measurement, was 5 points on the 0 to 27 point PHQ-9 scale. Conclusions:Well-validated as a diagnostic measure, the PHQ-9 has now proven to be a responsive and reliable measure of depression treatment outcomes. Its responsiveness to treatment coupled with its brevity makes the PHQ-9 an attractive tool for gauging response to treatment in individual patient care as well as in clinical research.

Prevalence of cognitive impairment Data from the Indianapolis Study of Health and Aging

Background: The epidemiology and natural history of cognitive impairment that is not dementia is important to the understanding of normal aging and dementia. Objective: To determine the prevalence and outcome of cognitive impairment that is not dementia in an elderly African American population. Method: A two-phase, longitudinal study of aging and dementia. A total of 2212 community-dwelling African American residents of Indianapolis, IN, aged 65 and older were screened, and a subset (n = 351) received full clinical assessment and diagnosis. Subsets of the clinically assessed were seen again for clinical assessment and rediagnosis at 18 and 48 months. Weighted logistic regression was used to generate age-specific prevalence estimates. Results: The overall rate of cognitive impairment among community-dwelling elderly was 23.4%. Age-specific rates indicate increasing prevalence with increasing age: 19.2% for ages 65 to 74 years, 27.6% for ages 75 to 84 years, and 38.0% for ages 85+ years. The most frequent cause of cognitive impairment was medically unexplained memory loss with a community prevalence of 12.5%, followed by medical illness–associated cognitive impairment (4.0% prevalence), stroke (3.6% prevalence), and alcohol abuse (1.5% prevalence). At 18-month follow-up, 26% (17/66) of the subjects had become demented. Conclusions: Cognitive impairment short of dementia affects nearly one in four community-dwelling elders and is a major risk factor for later development of dementia.

Comorbidity profile of dementia patients in primary care: Are they sicker?

OBJECTIVES: To compare the medical comorbidity of older patients with and without dementia in primary care.

Treatment of depression improves physical functioning in older adults

Objectives: To determine the effect of collaborative care management for depression on physical functioning in older adults.

Comparison of tailored interventions to increase mammography screening in nonadherent older women

BACKGROUND Recent increases in mammography use have led to a decrease in mortality from breast cancer. METHODS Building on the Health Belief Model, the Transtheoretical Model, and past effectiveness of tailored interventions, we conducted a prospective randomized trial (n = 773) to test the efficacy on mammography adherence of tailored interventions delivered by five different methods, i.e., telephone counseling, in-person counseling, physician letter, and combinations of telephone with letter and in-person with letter. RESULTS All five interventions increased mammography adherence significantly relative to usual care (odds ratios, 1.93 to 3.55) at 6 months post intervention. The combination of in-person with physician letter was significantly more effective than telephone alone or letter alone. Women thinking about getting a mammogram at baseline were more likely to be adherent by 6 months; even those in usual care achieved 48% adherence compared with 50-70% in the intervention groups. In contrast, women not thinking about getting a mammogram needed the interventions to increase their adherence from 13% to over 30%. CONCLUSIONS All five interventions were effective at increasing mammography adherence. Women not thinking about getting a mammogram were most likely to benefit from these tailored interventions while other women might need less intensive interventions.

Computerized decision support to reduce potentially inappropriate prescribing to older emergency department patients: a randomized, controlled trial.

OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the effectiveness of computer‐assisted decision support in reducing potentially inappropriate prescribing to older adults.

Implementing Innovative Models of Dementia Care: The Healthy Aging Brain Center

Background: Recent randomized controlled trials have demonstrated the effectiveness of the collaborative dementia care model targeting both the patients suffering from dementia and their informal caregivers. Objective: To implement a sustainable collaborative dementia care program in a public health care system in Indianapolis. Methods: We used the framework of Complex Adaptive System and the tool of the Reflective Adaptive Process to translate the results of the dementia care trial into the Healthy Aging Brain Center (HABC). Results: Within its first year of operation, the HABC delivered 528 visits to serve 208 patients and 176 informal caregivers. The mean age of HABC patients was 73.8 (standard deviation, SD 9.5), 40% were African-Americans, 42% had less than high school education, 14% had normal cognitive status, 39% received a diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment, and 46% were diagnosed with dementia. Within 12 months of the initial HABC visit, 28% of patients had at least one visit to an emergency room (ER) and 14% were hospitalized with a mean length of stay of five days. The rate of a one-week ER revisit was 14% and the 30-day rehospitalization rate was 11%. Only 5% of HABC patients received an order for neuroleptics and only 16% had simultaneous orders for both definite anticholinergic and anti-dementia drugs. Conclusion: The tools of ‘implementation science’ can be utilized to translate a health care delivery model developed in the research laboratory to a practical, operational, health care delivery program.

Acute Care Utilization by Dementia Caregivers Within Urban Primary Care Practices

BACKGROUNDCaring for an individual with Alzheimer’s dementia (AD) is stressful, and studies show that this stress has an impact on both the physical and mental health of the caregiver. However, many questions remain about the characteristics of AD patients and their caregivers that contribute to this stress and how it impacts caregivers’ use of healthcare resources.OBJECTIVETo study the impact of stress on the physical and mental health of the caregiver.DESIGNPatients underwent extensive testing to allow description of their degree of cognitive impairment, behavioral and psychological symptoms, medical comorbidities, and functional abilities. Caregivers were assessed for depressive symptoms and also for emergency department (ED) use and hospitalizations in the previous six months. Multivariate logistic regression was used to evaluate impact of patients’ dementia symptoms on caregivers’ acute care utilization.PARTICIPANTSOne hundred and fifty-three AD patients and their caregivers attending two large, urban, university-affiliated primary care practices were enrolled in a cross-sectional study to examine the facets of dementia caregiving that impact caregiver acute health care utilization.RESULTSTwenty-four percent of the caregivers had at least one ED visit or hospitalization in the six months prior to enrollment. After adjusting for caregiver age, gender, and education, our logistic regression model found that the caregivers’ acute care utilization was associated with their depression as measured by the PHQ-9 (OR 1.09, 95% CI 1.00–1.18), the patients’ behavioral and psychological symptoms as measured by the NPI (OR 1.04, 95% CI 1.01–1.08), and the patients’ functional status as measured by the ADCS-ADL (OR 1.05, 95% CI 1.01–1.09).CONCLUSIONTo improve the health of AD caregivers, a primary care system needs to reallocate resources to manage the functional, behavioral, and psychological symptoms related to the care-recipients suffering from AD.

Assessment of differential item functioning for demographic comparisons in the MOS SF-36 health survey

Objective: To investigate whether items of the Medical Outcomes Study (MOS) 36-Item Short-Form Health Status Survey (SF-36) exhibited differential item functioning (DIF) with respect to age, education, race, and gender. Methods: The data for this study come from two large national datasets, the MOS and the 1990 National Survey of Functional Health Status (NSFHS). We used logistic regression to identify items exhibiting DIF. Results: We found DIF to be most problematic for age comparisons. Items flagged for age DIF were vigorous activities, bend/kneel/stoop, bathing or dressing, limited in kind of work, health in general, get sick easier than others, expect health to get worse, felt calm and peaceful, and all four vitality items. Items flagged for education DIF include vigorous activities, health in general, health is excellent, felt calm and peaceful, and been a happy person. Vigorous activities, walk more than a mile, health in general, and expect health to get worse were identified as DIF when comparing African-Americans with whites. No items were identified for gender DIF. Conclusions: We found several consistent patterns of DIF using two national datasets with different population characteristics. In the current study, the effect of DIF rarely transferred to the scale level. Further research is needed to corroborate these results and determine qualitatively why DIF may occur for these specific items.