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Background: visual and cognitive impairments are common in later life. Yet there are very few cognitive screening tests for the visually impaired.Objective: to screen for cognitive impairment in the visually impaired.Methods: case–control study including 150 elderly participants with visual impairment (n = 74) and a control group without visual impairment (n = 76) using vision-independent cognitive tests and cognitive screening tests (MMSE and clock drawing tests (CDT)) which are in part vision dependent.Results: the scoring of the two groups did not differ in the vision-independent cognitive tests. Visually impaired patients performed poorer than controls in the vision-dependent items of the MMSE (T = 7.3; df: 148; P < 0.001) and in CDT (T = 3.1; df: 145; P = 0.003). No group difference was found when vision-independent items were added to MMSE and CDT. The test score gain by the use of vision-independent items correlated with the severity of visual impairment (P < 0.002).Conclusion: visually impaired patients benefit from cognitive tests, which do not rely on vision. The more visually impaired the greater the benefit. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Background: cognitive test scores and visual acuity are strongly associated in older people. This may be due to poor vision limiting performance on cognitive tasks specifically requiring vision, or an association between visual and neurodegenerative disorders.Objective: to explore, using data from the Newcastle 85+ cohort study, the impact of sight impairment (SI) on Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) scores and whether reduced scores among SI participants are limited to tasks requiring vision.Results: of 839 participants aged 85 years, 44 (5.2%) were registered SI. Median (inter-quartile range) sMMSE scores were 25 (22–29) for SI and 28 (25–29) for non-SI participants (P = 0.006). SI participants had lower subscale scores on tasks requiring vision (P < 0.001 for each) but also for some subscale scores not obviously requiring vision: orientation (P = 0.018) and repetition (P = 0.030). Excluding visual items, there was no significant difference in MMSE scores between those with/without SI.Conclusion: SI may be an obstacle to older people completing cognitive assessments including tasks requiring vision. People with SI also scored lower on some tasks not obviously requiring vision. An association between cognitive impairment and SI may exist beyond simply being unable to see the test material in cognitive tests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]