Ann Acad Med Singap
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Ann Acad Med Singap · Jul 2013
Diagnostic performance of short portable mental status questionnaire for screening dementia among patients attending cognitive assessment clinics in Singapore.
The Short Portable Mental Status Questionnaire (SPMSQ) is a brief cognitive screening instrument, which is easy to use by a healthcare worker with little training. However, the validity of this instrument has not been established in Singapore. Thus, the primary aim of this study was to determine the diagnostic performance of SPMSQ for screening dementia among patients attending outpatient cognitive assessment clinics and to assess whether the appropriate cut-off score varies by patient's age and education. A secondary aim of the study was to map the SPMSQ scores with Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) scores. ⋯ Despite the advantage of being a brief screening instrument for dementia, the use of SPMSQ is limited by its low sensitivity and specificity, especially among patients with less than 6 years of education.