Detecting cognitive impairment in patients with early Parkinson’s disease. Combining two brief screening tests: the Addenbrooke’s Cognitive Examination (ACE) and the INECO Frontal Screening (IFS)

ARÉVALO GONZALO; MARÍA ROCA; TERESA TORRALVA; EZEQUIEL GLEICHGERRCHT; ANABEL CHADE; OSCAR GERSHANIK; FACUNDO MANES

Honolulu

Encuentro; 63rd AAN 2011 Annual Meeting; 2011

American Academy of Neurology

OBJECTIVE: The goal of the present study was to investigate the usefulness of a combined cognitive screening which includes the Addenbrooke's Cognitive Examination (ACE) and the INECO Frontal Screening (IFS), an executive screening tool designed to detect executive dysfunction (Torralva et al 2009), in the detection of cognitive deficits in early Parkinson Disease (PD). BACKGROUND: The ACE is a screening tool which has shown to be sensitive in the detection of cognitive dysfunction in the moderate and severe stages of PD. A recent study showed that the ACE alone is not capable of detecting cognitive dysfunction in early PD (Chade 2008), probably because it does not extensively assess executive functions, which is the most frequent common cognitive dysfunction in the early stages of PD. DESIGN/METHODS: A group of early PD patients (n = 20) were assessed with both screening tools as well as with a complete neuropsychological battery including tests of attention, memory, visuoperceptual skills and executive function. RESULTS: Even though 55% of patients showed deficits in two or more tests of the cognitive battery (z score