Validation of the Arabic Rowland Universal Dementia Assessment Scale (A-RUDAS) in elderly with mild and moderate dementia

Abstract

The A-RUDAS is proposed for dementia screening in clinical practice and in research in Arabic-speaking populations with an optimal cutoff of ≤22.

Combining the Rowland Universal Dementia Assessment Scale and the Informant Questionnaire on Cognitive Decline in the Elderly to Improve Detection of Dementia in an Arabic-Speaking Population

“…Although the RUDAS was designed to minimize the effect of education, we found test performances to be influenced by education in this population, in particular among those with no formal education. However, this did not affect the diagnostic accuracy of the Arabic RUDAS (A-RUDAS) when adopting the recommended cutoff value [5]. In contrast, we found no influence of education on the IQCODE [6], a result consistent with previous studies of the RUDAS and IQCODE in older populations from low- and middle-income (LMIC) countries with little education [7,8,9,10,11,12].…”

“…Like the MMSE, the RUDAS has a score interval of 0-30 points, is easy to administer and takes about 10 min to complete. It has been validated in several clinical and cultural contexts [4,7,10,11,12,17,18,20,21] including Arabic [5], generally showing good psychometric properties that are comparable or slightly superior to the commonly used MMSE. …”

“…However, the high rate of illiteracy among elderly people in the EMRO renders cognitive assessment very challenging, since commonly used cognitive screening tests, such as the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) [3], require reading, writing and arithmetic skills. We have previously validated the Rowland Universal Dementia Assessment Scale (RUDAS) [4], a brief cognitive screening instrument that was specifically designed to minimize the effect of culture, language and education, and also the Informant Questionnaire on Cognitive Decline in the Elderly (IQCODE) and have shown that both possessed good screening performance for dementia in an Arabic-speaking older population with little education [5,6]. In particular the psychometric properties of the IQCODE were found to be excellent.…”

Cognitive assessments in multicultural populations using the Rowland Universal Dementia Assessment Scale: a systematic review and meta-analysis

“…After abstract and full-text review, 11 published articles and 3 published abstracts were selected ( Figure 1). Data were extracted for the full-text articles only, because insufficient data were available from the abstracts [16][17][18] and further data were unobtainable. Available data from the abstracts can be found in Appendix 2 (available at www.cmaj.ca/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1503/cmaj .140802/-/DC1).…”

A Study Protocol to Assess the Determinants of Glycaemic Control, Complications and Health Related Quality of Life for People with Type 2 Diabetes in Saudi Arabia

“…RUDAS is a multicultural cognitive assessment tool that is not affected by literacy level, and has been validated among Arabicspeaking people [32,37]. Approval to use the amended questionnaire was obtained from all ethical committees that have approved this project.…”