Evaluation of sensitivity and specificity of the INECO Frontal Screening and the Frontal Assessment Battery in mild cognitive impairment

Abstract

ABSTRACT. The Frontal Assessment Battery (FAB) and the INECO Frontal Screening (IFS) are two instruments frequently used to explore cognitive deficits in different diseases. However, studies reporting their use in patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) are limited. Objective: To compare the sensitivity and specificity of FAB and IFS in mild cognitive impairment (multiple-domain amnestic MCI subtype — md-aMCI). Methods: IFS and FAB were administered to 30 md-aMCI patients and 59 healthy participants. Sensitivity and specificity were investigated using the Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) analysis. Results: The area under the ROC curve (AUC) of IFS for MCI patients was .82 (sensitivity=0.96; specificity=0.76), whereas the AUC of FAB was 0.74 (sensitivity=0.73; specificity=0.70). Conclusions: In comparison to FAB, IFS showed higher sensitivity and specificity for the detection of executive dysfunctions in md-aMCI subtype. The use of IFS in everyday clinical practice would allow detecting the frontal dysfunctions in MCI patients with greater precision, enabling the early intervention and impeding the transition to more severe cognitive alterations.

Utility of the INECO Frontal Screening and the Frontal Assessment Battery in detecting executive dysfunction in early-onset cognitive impairment and dementia

“…The results of the current study are in line with previous reports on older patient cohorts reporting that the IFS and the FAB can effectively differentiate dementia (Custodio et al, 2016) and MCI patients (Fernández-Fleites et al, 2021) from healthy controls. The patient groups differed significantly in the total scores and in many individual subtests.…”

“…These findings have important clinical application potential because short and accurate cognitive tests targeted to capture ED are of great value for initial assessment in primary healthcare. The results of the current study are in line with previous reports on older patient cohorts reporting that the IFS and the FAB can effectively differentiate dementia (Custodio et al, 2016) and MCI patients (Fernández-Fleites et al, 2021) from healthy controls. The patient groups differed significantly in the total scores and in many individual subtests.…”

“…When comparing the two tests, the IFS seems more accurate in differentiating AD from bvFTD (Custodio et al, 2017; Gleichgerrcht et al, 2011), as well as AD or FTD from healthy controls (Custodio et al, 2016; Moreira et al, 2014). Furthermore, the IFS has been reported to identify MCI more accurately than the FAB (Fernández-Fleites et al, 2021) and to have stronger correlations with standard neuropsychological executive tests (Gleichgerrcht et al, 2011). Dementia diagnosis often requires clinical follow-up; therefore, the ability of a method to detect possible changes in executive functions is essential.…”

Patterns of structure-function association in normal aging and in Alzheimer's disease: Screening for mild cognitive impairment and dementia with ML regression and classification models

“…Cognitive tests are time consuming, their reliability is disputable. According to the previous studies, the accuracy of the tests distinguishing MCI from healthy aging ranges from 58 to 90% (Tóth et al, 2018;Müller et al, 2019;Fernández-Fleites et al, 2021;Rashedi et al, 2021). Because of the inconsistent findings clinicians cannot rely on cognitive scores as a single diagnostic modality (Statsenko et al, 2021e,f).…”