Background:
1. Memory impairment is the essential symptom to all dementing conditions and the first symptom in majority of patients with Alzheimer's disease.
2. Brief screening memory test is needed for early detection of aged people with memory impairment before detailed clinical examination both in clinical settings and in community.
Objective: Development of a brief memory test for easy and early detection of people with memory impairment in clinical settings and communities.
Design: Validation of the Mini-Memory Test (MiMeT) through discriminant validity, concurrent validity, sensitivity/specificity, and receiver-operating curve in a group of hospital elderly psychiatric patients. The MiMeT is composed of 4 domains: 4 orientation items, 8 short-term memory items, 8 long-term memory items and 4 remote memory items, making the total score of 24.
Subjects and Methods: MiMeT, Blessed Dementia Rating Scale, Samsung Dementia Questionnaire, Lawton instrumental activities of daily living, Barthel activity of daily living, and Cognitive Impairment Diagnosing Instrument were given 691 psychiatric patients aged 60 or more with (n=317, 45.9%) memory impairment or without (n=374, 54.1%) on the clinical basis.
Results: Pearson correlation coefficients with other measurements were between 0.289 for Barthel's and 0.788 for Cognitive Impairment Diagnosing Instrument. The 2 groups with and without memory impairment showed highly significant differences. At the cutoff score of 17/18 sensitivity was 90.5% and specificity was 82.9% and at the score the area under curve was 0.938 (SE, 0.009; 95% CI, 0.920-0.956). Of the 4 domains, the long-term memory was best one in terms of all the above validations.
Conclusion: The MiMeT seems to be a useful brief memory test for easy screening of elderly people with memory problem.
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