COGNISTAT: CULTURAL APPROAPRIATENESS AND CLINICAL UTILITY FOR THE GREEK ELDERLY

OBJECTIVE: The cultural appropriateness of the Cognistat for the Greek elderly and its clinical utility for Greek elderly patients with all-cause dementia was examined in the present study.METHOD: The Greek version of Cognistat was administered to healthy elderly persons recruited from the community (n= 88, male: 43%, Mage =69.4, SDage=4.3) and patients with all-cause dementia (n= 22, male: 38%, Mage =76.4, SDage=9.4). The effects of demographic characteristics (age, education, sex) on performance were assessed with stepwise multiple linear regression analyses. A linear stepwise discriminant analysis was further conducted to determine whether Gognistat Total Composite scores discriminate healthy participants from patients with all-cause dementia.RESULTS: Greek healthy elderly persons had a mean performance 72.5 (out of 88) on the Cognistat Total Composite score. Age and education contributed significantly to the overall performance, accounting for 36% of its variance [F (2, 67) = 23.86, p < 0.00]. The discriminative accuracy of the Cognistat for elderly with and without dementia was very high, as the overall cross-validated classification accuracy for the entire sample was 90%.CONCLUSIONS: The Cognistat is well accepted by the Greek elderly and it is a useful tool for both evaluating overall cognition in healthy elderly and identifying elderly persons with all-cause dementia.