Functional deficits in patients with mild cognitive impairment

Abstract

These findings indicate that in patients with MCI, the patient's lack of awareness of functional deficits identified by informants strongly predicts a future diagnosis of AD. If replicated, these findings suggest that clinicians evaluating MCI patients should obtain both self-reports and informant reports of functional deficits to help in prediction of long-term outcome.

Degree of discrepancy between self and other‐reported everyday functioning by cognitive status: dementia, mild cognitive impairment, and healthy elders

“…Thus, self-report ratings of everyday functioning within the MCI groups do not appear to be more discrepant from their informants' ratings than the degree of discrepancy observed between normal controls and their informants. Other groups have also failed to find a significant discrepancy between self-and informant-reported functional abilities within an MCI group (Tabert et al, 2002). In fact, as noted above, in the current study of community dwelling elders, the MCI groups as well as the normals tended to report slightly more functional change than their informants.…”

“…Given the trend for an association between verbal memory and the DFQ Difference Score, along with the clear discrepancy between raters in the demented group, results suggest that as people gradually become more cognitively impaired their ability to accurately report their functional status diminishes. Other studies have suggested that when a discrepancy between self and informant reported cognitive or functional status is observed in patients with MCI there is an increased likelihood of eventual conversion to dementia (Tabert et al, 2002;Tierney et al, 1996). The finding that, according to informant report, there may be different levels of everyday functional loss across various subtypes of MCI, with the MCI-memory group showing somewhat more functional change than the MCI-non-memory group, warrants further investigation.…”

“…However, functional change arguably occurs over the course of MCI since it is precisely such cumulative change that leads to eventual conversion to dementia. In fact, recent studies have suggested that mild changes in daily functioning can be detected in MCI groups (Artero et al, 2001;Tabert et al, 2002). At present, the guidelines relating to functional change in MCI are unclear, and reflect our currently limited knowledge concerning the types and extent of functional change that occurs in these disorders.…”

“…While differences in self vs informant reporting of cognitive and functional abilities has been well studied in patients with dementia, only a few studies have examined this issue in MCI (Tierney et al, 1996;Albert et al, 1999;Tabert et al, 2002). These studies have produced conflicting results in terms of the accuracy of self-reported cognitive and functional abilities relative to reports of informants.…”

Avaliação das atividades de vida diária de idosos com diferentes níveis de demência

“…Since functional status is a basic domain of gerontological assessment 8,9 , several specific questionnaires for the assessment of ADL were developed and are commonly utilized 5,6,9,10,11,12 , specially the Kats Index (BADL) 9,10,13 , the Lawton-Brody Index 9,14 and the Pfeffer Index (IADL) 9,14,15 . However, in Brazil, these questionnaires have not yet been systematically utilized.…”