The use of the mini-mental state examination and the clock-drawing test for dementia in a tertiary hospital.

INTRODUCTION An early and a quick identification of dementia is desirable to improve the overall care to the affected persons in the developing countries. The aim of this study was to evaluate the discriminative abilities of the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) and the Clock Drawing Test (CDT) in differentiating the demented patients from the controls and also the differentiation between the different types of dementia. PATIENTS AND METHODS This study was designed to evaluate the patients with varied types and severities of dementia, who were diagnosed by using the Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR) scale. All the patients completed the MMSE and the simplified CDT. RESULTS This study included 197 patients with an age range of 43-79 years. Fifty-one patients (25.9%) were diagnosed with Alzheimer Dementia (AD), 37 patients (18.8%) with Vascular Dementia (VD), 23 patients (11.7%) with Parkinson's Disease Dementia (PDD) and 86 patients (43.6%) with other variants of dementia. The total MMSE score of the enrolled patients was significantly lower as compared to that of the control subjects, with a non-significant difference between the varied diagnoses. The total CDT scores were significantly lower in the patients as compared to those in the controls, with significantly lower scores in the PDD group as compared to those in the AD group. The patients who had AD showed non-significantly higher CDT scores as compared to the patients who had vascular and other types of dementia. CONCLUSION A combined application of both MMSE and CDT can identify the persons with a cognitive affection and this may be a useful tool for the diagnosis of the non Alzheimer's type of dementia.