Improving the Diagnostic Accuracy of the RBANS in Mild Cognitive Impairment With Construct-Consistent Measures

Abstract

Research on the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS) has suggested that it has somewhat limited sensitivity in the differentiation of patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) from patients with dementia and elderly patients with no neurologic or psychiatric diagnoses. This study sought to increase the diagnostic utility of the RBANS in differentiating between patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD), MCI, and no diagnosis (ND) with the addition of construct comparable neuropsychological test measures. Diagnostic utility was assessed by comparing patients diagnosed with MCI to patients diagnosed with AD as well as to the ND group. The following cognitive domains were investigated: short-term memory, retention and long-term memory, language, attention, visuoconstruction, and overall cognitive functioning. Stepwise logistic regressions found that in the comparisons between MCI and ND, the Step 2 addition of construct comparable neuropsychological measures provided a significant diagnostic increase in the short-term memory and overall cognitive functioning models. In the comparisons between MCI and AD, the Step 2 additions provided a significant diagnostic increase in the short-term memory, visuoconstruction, and overall cognitive functioning models. Results suggested that the inclusion of construct similar neuropsychological tests significantly increases the diagnostic accuracy of the RBANS when attempting to identify more subtle cognitive deficits inherent in MCI.

Relationship between 18F-Flutemetamol uptake and RBANS performance in non-demented community-dwelling older adults

“…Numerous research studies have been conducted regarding the ability of the measure to identify cognitive change in individuals with normal cognition (Andreotti & Hawkins, 2015; Cooley et al, 2015; Duff & Ramezani, 2015; Phillips et al, 2015; Thaler, Hill, Duff, Mold, & Scott, 2015), Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI; Clark, Hobson, & O’Bryant, 2010; Duff, Hobson, Beglinger, & O’Bryant, 2010; Hobson, Hall, Humphreys-Clark, Schrimsher, & O’Bryant, 2010; Karantzoulis, Novitski, Gold, & Randolph, 2013; O’Mahar et al, 2012), and Alzheimer’s disease (AD; Burton, Enright, O’Connell, Lanting, & Morgan, 2015; Duff et al, 2008; Enright, O’Connell, MacKinnon, & Morgan, 2015; Heyanka, Scott, & Adams, 2015; McDermott & DeFilippis, 2010; Morgan, Linck, Scott, Adams, & Mold, 2010; Schmitt et al, 2010). Despite these efforts, however, there have been few studies examining the RBANS and its association with imaging biomarkers related to AD, such as decreased hippocampal volumes on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI; Choi et al, 2016; Jack et al, 2010), hypometabolism on fluoro-2-deoxyglucose (FDG) positron emission tomography (PET; Frings, Spehl, Hull, & Meyer, 2016; Jagust et al, 2010), and amyloid accumulations on amyloid PET (Beach, Thal, Zanette, Smith, & Buckley, 2016; L.…”

Evaluation of Available Cognitive Tools Used to Measure Mild Cognitive Decline: A Scoping Review

“…The majority of studies were conducted in Asian countries (n = 17) [25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41], followed by European countries (n = 13) [42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54] and the Unites States (n = 7) [55][56][57][58][59][60][61]. The remaining studies came from Brazil (n = 3) [62][63][64], Australia (n = 2) [65,66], Greece (n = 2) [67,68], Argentina (n = 1) [69], unclear origin (n = 2) [70,71], Cuba (n = 1) [72] and Turkey (n = 1) [73]. In terms of study design, most included articles were cross-sectional (n = 3...…”

“…The remaining studies came from Brazil (n = 3) [62][63][64], Australia (n = 2) [65,66], Greece (n = 2) [67,68], Argentina (n = 1) [69], unclear origin (n = 2) [70,71], Cuba (n = 1) [72] and Turkey (n = 1) [73]. In terms of study design, most included articles were cross-sectional (n = 33) [25][26][27][28][29]31,32,34,35,[37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47]49,53,54,63,[65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72][73] and cohort studies (n = 14) [30,33,36,48,[50]…”

“…Participants with low, average and high levels of education were included. To evaluate the psychometric performance of tools, studies used various validated comparison standards including the Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR) [26,32,56,65], the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) [25,42,45,46,49], Petersen's criteria [29,36,53,57,64,71,73], National Institute on Ageing-Alzheimer's Association (NIA-AA) criteria [40,44,47,50,70], brief cognitive tests [59,67], clinical consensus by health professionals [61], Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders criteria (DSM) [27], other methods [51,60,63,68,72], or a combination of the above standards [28,30,31,[33][34][35][37][38][39]41,43,48,52,55,56,…”