Is the Folstein?s Mini-Mental-Test an Aphasia Test?

VIGLIECCA NS, PEÑALVA MC, MOLINA SC, VOOS JA, VIGLIECCA MR.

APPLIED NEUROPSYCHOLOGY

PSYCHOLOGY PRESS

Lugar: Berlin; Año: 2012 vol. 19 p. 221 - 228

1532-4826

The mini-mental status examination (MMSE) is recognized as a valid screening for dementia. It consists of 29/30 verbal items. The Brief Aphasia Evaluation (BAE) includes 10 aphasia and 12 orientation items which are similar to most of the MMSE items. It was studied if those BAE items (MMSE-like): a) correlate with the rest of the BAE items (BAE-rest), and b) differentiate patients with left cerebral lesions (LC) from both patients with right cerebral lesions (RC) and healthy participants (HP). A sample of 109 right-handed volunteers (38 HP, 37 LC, and 34 RC) was studied. The three groups were matched according to gender, age and education. Patients were similar in multiple variables. The correlation between MMSE-like and BAE-rest was 0.90. MMSE-like showed a sensitivity and specificity of 0.81 or above to identify the LC from the other two groups. There is a risk of misdiagnosing aphasia as dementia with the MMSE.