Modification of the mini-mental state examination for use with the elderly in a non-western society. Part II: Cutoff points and their diagnostic validities

✍ Scribed by Dr. Jong-Han Park; Young Nam Park; Hyo Jin Ko

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1991
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 649 KB
• Volume: 6
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0885-6230
• DOI: 10.1002/gps.930061208

✦ Synopsis

Diagnostic power of the Korean version of the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE-K) (Park and for DSM-111-R dementia was studied in 406 persons aged 60 years or more from three sources. Psychiatric clinic patients (N= 177) were diagnosed using standard clinical procedures, laboratory tests and psychological tests; in residential home elderly (N= 128) consensus diagnoses were reached by two psychiatrists afterjoint interviews using the CAMDEX (Roth et al., 1988) including physical examinations but without laboratory tests; and members of psychiatric patients' families (N= 101) were diagnosed after a brief psychiatric interview and assessment of activities of daily living by one psychiatrist. At the cutoff point of 24/23 of MMSE-K score, sensitivity was 92.0% and specificity 91.5%. 23.9% of demented people and 39.3% of non-demented obtained similar scores between 20 and 26. With the introduction of the arbitrary criteria of 'questionable dementia' (MMSE-K score 21-24) the false positive rate was reduced to 1% and the false negative rate to 3%. 74% of males with 'questionable dementia' scores were clinically demented while only 12% of females with the same scores were demented.