Diagnostic validity of age and education corrections for the Mini-Mental State Examination in older African Americans.

Objectives: To investigate whether demographic (age and education) adjustments for the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) attenuate mean score discrepancies between African-American and Caucasian adults and whether demographically adjusted MMSE scores improve the diagnostic classification accuracy of dementia in African-American adults over unadjusted MMSE scores.

Design: Cross-sectional study.

Setting: Community-dwelling adults participating in the Mayo Clinic Alzheimer's Disease Patient Registry and Alzheimer's Disease Research Center.

Diagnostic accuracy of percent retention scores on RBANS verbal memory subtests for the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease and mild cognitive impairment.

Previous research has supported the use of percent retention scores in the neuropsychological assessment of memory, and many widely used memory measures provide for the calculation and normative comparison of these scores. The Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS), an increasingly utilized assessment tool for cognitive impairment, provides normative data on delayed memory total raw scores only. The current study was aimed at determining the diagnostic accuracy of a novel percent retention score calculated from RBANS verbal memory subtests (delayed recall minus last learning trial) when distinguishing between normal controls, individuals diagnosed with Mild Cognitive Impairment, and individuals diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.

Identifying functional impairment with scores from the repeatable battery for the assessment of neuropsychological status (RBANS).

Objective: To examine the link between RBANS scores and functional impairment. Functional status was evaluated through informant report using the clinical dementia rating (CDR) scale.

Methods: Archival data were reviewed from records of 99 patients in a memory disorder clinic (MDC) research database.

Utility of the RBANS in detecting cognitive impairment associated with Alzheimer's disease: sensitivity, specificity, and positive and negative predictive powers.

Although initially developed as a brief dementia battery, the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS) has not yet demonstrated its sensitivity, specificity, and positive and negative predictive powers in detecting cognitive impairment in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD). Therefore, the current study examined the clinical utility of the RBANS by comparing two age-, education-, and gender-matched groups: patients with AD (n=69) and comparators (n=69). Significant differences (p<0.