Utility of nelson’s modified card sorting test in patients with alzheimer’s disease or vascular dementia

Abstract

Aim: In this study we used the Nelson's Modified Card Sorting Test (MCST) to find the differences between Alzheimer's disease (AD) group/Vascular dementia (VD) group and a normal control group (non-dementia and non-AD), and to identify the commonality between the MCST and dementia patients. Patients and Methods:The MCST was administered to 32 AD patients, 18 vascular dementia patients, and 38 controls. The relationship between the MCST performance and demographic characteristics was evaluated. Results: There were no statistical differences in age, sex, level of education, smoking, drinking and depression in the three groups. The MCST was classified into four groups for analysis-number of categories completed (Cat), preservative error score (PE), non-preservative error score (NPE), unique error (UE) and total error (TE). For Cat, UE and TE showed a significant difference in all three groups, whereas PE and NPE revealed no significant difference. Conclusion: These findings suggest that cognitive function appears to significantly impair MCST performances in AD and VD patients, so these should be taken into consideration during an interpretation of the clinical assessment. For the effective use of the MCST in a clinical setting, further studies of specific clinical populations are planned to develop normative data for elderly Taiwanese people.

Executive functioning and risk for Alzheimer’s disease in the cognitively intact: Family history predicts Wisconsin Card Sorting Test performance.

“…Our findings, in conjunction with findings regarding the sensitivity of the WCST in detecting AD (Bondi et al, 1993;Chao et …”

“…14 Chao et al, 2013;Nagahama et al, 2003), and extended them to show its sensitivity to risk for AD in cognitively intact elders. The results also complement and extend a recent report showing the sensitivity of a battery of executive measures to FH in cognitively intact elders (Donix et al, 2012).…”

Diagnostic Utility of the Shortened Version of the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test in Patients With Sporadic Late Onset Alzheimer Disease

“…Furthermore, both from the neuropsychological context and the research perspective, an increasing need has been observed to have shorter protocols that facilitate the task, since a protocol that is too long can consume resources that in some cases are very limited. 31 By way of conclusion, we can say that our findings indicate that the use of only 1 deck (the WCST-64) provides the same information in patients with AD as the use of both decks (the full version), as we found the 2 decks to be equivalent for all the items with the exception of "number of hits," which decreases with the second deck, possibly as a result of the long duration of the test. 13 It is also important to underscore the sensitivity of the test, since it found significant differences between the CG and the experimental group for all the test items.…”

“…Furthermore, both from the neuropsychological context and the research perspective, an increasing need has been observed to have shorter protocols that facilitate the task, since a protocol that is too long can consume resources that in some cases are very limited. 31…”

“…This decrease in performance as the test progresses could be explained by the long time it takes to administer (30-60 minutes), being particularly complicated for the patients with AD 30 or CG participants. 31 This situation justifies the need to utilize the shortened version of the WCST for a reliable test to evaluate the EFs in elderly populations or populations with neurodegenerative diseases.…”