Diagnostic utility of the Pittsburgh sleep Quality Index in memory clinics

Abstract

PSQI scores were suboptimal for dementia diagnosis using traditional diagnostic parameters, but were pragmatically useful in identifying non-demented 'memory complainers' with poor sleep quality. This observation may have therapeutic implications for these patients.

Test Your Memory test: diagnostic utility in a memory clinic population

“…Moreover, patient self-administered tests also omit the clinician-patient interaction in testing which may inform clinical judgements over and above any raw tests scores. We recommend that TYM should be used as a screening test, not a stand-alone diagnostic measure, with patients who fall below the designated cutoff being subjected to further investigation to ascertain a cause for their cognitive impairment, since poor performance on such tests may result from a number of variables beside disease state, including anxiety, depression (Hancock and Larner, 2009a), sleep disturbance (Hancock and Larner, 2009c), low premorbid abilities and medication use. Additional studies will be required to examine the TYM further, such as longitudinal follow-up to ensure validity, in other clinical settings such as primary care, and to assess the dependence of test scores on patient age and education level, since these factors are recognised to influence test scores of other screening instruments such as the MMSE.…”

“…Standard clinical diagnostic criteria were used for the diagnosis of dementia (DSM-IV; American Psychiatric Association, 2000) and dementia subtypes (McKhann et al, 1984(McKhann et al, , 2001Román et al, 1993;McKeith et al, 1996McKeith et al, , 1999Neary et al, 1998;Petersen et al, 1999), as in previous collaborative studies between these units (Hancock and Larner, 2007, 2008, 2009a, 2009b, 2009cLarner and Hancock, 2008). As this was a pragmatic study, patients were not selected according to diagnosis but as they presented to the clinics.…”

Prevalence of Sleep Disturbances in Mild Cognitive Impairment and Dementing Disorders: A Multicenter Italian Clinical Cross-Sectional Study on 431 Patients

“…This represents a controversial issue since an increase in the frequency of sleep disturbance in more severely compromised patients has been variably reported in previous studies [40,41,42,43]. Otherwise, another study which used only PSQI in a cohort of patients with complaints of cognitive decline, showed that poor sleep quality was more common in nondemented versus demented patients [44]. …”

The Pittsburgh sleep quality index as a screening tool for sleep dysfunction in clinical and non-clinical samples: A systematic review and meta-analysis

“…Studies that examined differences in PSQI global score between healthy subjects and patients suffering from a variety of disorders known to be associated with poor sleep, showed significant differences between groups [9,22,45,49,51,56,60,68,71,79]. Studies that examined differences within groups of people (i.e., race, age, sex, different symptom clusters within the same population, etc.)…”