1. The assessment of cognition in visually impaired older adults.
- Author
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Killen, Alison, Firbank, Michael J., Collerton, Daniel, Clarke, Michael, Jefferis, Joanna Mary, Taylor, John-Paul, Mckeith, Ian G., and Mosimann, Urs Peter
- Subjects
COGNITION disorders diagnosis ,CHI-squared test ,STATISTICAL correlation ,RELIABILITY (Personality trait) ,RESEARCH evaluation ,RESEARCH funding ,SCALES (Weighing instruments) ,STATISTICS ,T-test (Statistics) ,U-statistics ,VISUAL acuity ,DATA analysis ,CASE-control method ,OLD age - Abstract
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]
- Published
- 2013
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