Screening of Chronic Alcoholics for Cognitive Impairment Using Montreal Cognitive Assessment—Occupational Therapy Perspective.

Rationale: Chronic alcoholics suffer from cognitive impairment, thereby affecting their ADL and work performance. Objectives: The objective was to screen chronic alcoholics for cognitive impairment and assessing affectations in various components of MoCA. Early screening to help them from further deterioration in ADL and work. Materials and Methodology: In this case control study, 50 chronic alcoholics, males, age group 30–50 years, abstaining for more than two months, referred to outpatient De-addiction Occupational Therapy department of K. E. M. Hospital, Mumbai were screened using MoCA (Hindi) and compared with their age matched control group. Results: All patients showed mild cognitive impairment (MCI) on MoCA, irrespective of pattern and frequency of drinking. Their average mean score in MoCA test and control group was 21.02 and 26.03, respectively. The domains more affected were language, abstraction and memory, thus affecting their performance in ADL and work. Results were analyzed using unpaired ‘t’-test and were statistically significant at the level of p < 0.05 and 95 per cent confidence level. Conclusion: Screening of chronic alcoholics using MoCA showed MCI with varying degree of affectations in the sub-components of the test. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]