OBJECTIVE To validate Rowland Dementia Assessment Scale (RUDAS), as an instrument for the screening of people with dementia and cognitive impairment in Primary Health Care (PHC). RUDAS is a brief… Click to show full abstract
OBJECTIVE To validate Rowland Dementia Assessment Scale (RUDAS), as an instrument for the screening of people with dementia and cognitive impairment in Primary Health Care (PHC). RUDAS is a brief cognitive test, appropriate for people with minimum completed level of education and easily adaptable to multicultural contexts. For these reason it could be a good instrument for dementia screening in PHC. DESIGN Cross-sectional descriptive epidemiological study with a five-year follow up. LOCATION O Grove PHC centre, Galicia, Spain (covering a population of 10,650 individuals). OUTCOME MEASURES RUDAS; Mini Mental State Examination; Clinical Dementia Rating; Katz, Barthel and Lawton Indexes; MMSE and Yesavage Geriatric Depression Scale. PARTICIPANTS A total of 150 older adults (mean age 76.35±7.12years) randomly selected, from a low sociocultural and economical background and mainly rural and semirural origin. INTERVENTION RUDAS viability in PHC was checked, and its psychometric properties assessed: reliability, sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values. RESULTS RUDAS application was brief (7.58±2.10min) and well accepted. RUDAS area under receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve for the detection of dementia was 0.983 (95% confidence interval (CI): 0.97-1.00) for an optimal cut-off point of 22.5, with sensitivity of 89.3%, and a specificity of 100%. Area under ROC curve for discriminating dementia from mild cognitive impairment was 0.965 (95%CI: 0.91-1.00). CONCLUSIONS RUDAS test is fit for dementia screening in PHC and it is especially sensitive to discriminate PWD from people with MCI.
               
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