Epidemiology of cognitive impairment in Spain

Objectives: To assess the prevalence of dementia among the population of over 65 year olds attending primary healthcare outpatient clinics and to examine the association between this dementia and some sociodemographic variables.Methods: Cross-sectional descriptive study encompassing persons aged over 65 years in the whole Spanish territory. The study population sample was collected through random sampling. A total of 5169 persons were included. The Pfeiffer scale was used to assess all participants, and the Yesavage (for ruling out depression) and Hachinsky (for establishing aetiology) scales were used on those subjects with signs of dementia. The sociodemographic data were assessed by means of a survey.Results: Among the study population, 12.7% showed evidence of dementia (10.6% among males and 14.7% among females, p<0.01), which was severe in 20.5% of the cases. 70% of this dementia was of the degenerative type. Logistic regression analysis showed that there were differences for age, gender, social leve...