Sensitivity and specificity for dementia of population-based criteria for cognitive impairment: the MoVIES project

Poorly educated elderly populations may be misdiagnosed as suffering from dementia if the cognitive screening tests used do not allow for the effects of education on expression and cognitive capacity. When elderly residents of a rural Pennsylvania community were tested, a brief cognitive battery was found to be a more sensitive screening tool than the Mini-Mental State Exam (MMSE), global screening scale. The MMSE was more specific for individuals with higher cognitive performance levels. The results suggest that population-sensitive cutpoints should be used rather than a conventional cutoff point on the MMSE.