Assessment of patients with memory problems using a nurse-administered instrument to detect early dementia and dementiasubtypes
M. Dennis
Bok Engelsk 1998
| Utgitt | 1998
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| Omfang | Side 405- 409
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| Opplysninger | Background. With the development of pharmacological treatments forAlzheimer's disease there will be an increase in the numbers ofpatients requiring assessment from specialist services. Could therole of the specialist clinician be supported by other healthprofessionals screening those who might benefit from treatment?Method. Sixty-four consecutive referrals to the Leicester UniversityMemory Clinic were assessed at home by a community psychiatric nurseusing a semi-structured interview. The nurse then reported herfindings to a psychiatrist and a diagnosis was agreed. This diagnosiswas then compared to the Memory Clinic diagnosis and a standardized(ICD-10) diagnosis recorded by another psychiatrist examining theclinic records.Results. The nurse assessment procedure performed well in detectingdementia, with a kappa statistic (kappa) of 0.75 when compared to thestandardized and Memory Clinic diagnoses. There was, however, onlymoderate concordance between the ICD-10 diagnosis and nurse (kappa =0.46) and the Memory Clinic and nurse (kappa = 0.60) for Alzheimer'sdisease. The relatively low re value for Alzheimer's disease wasprincipally a result of difficult in differentiating vasculardementia.Conclusions. A single supervised community psychiatric nurse, using astructured assessment instrument, can adequately detect earlydementia in a sample of patients referred with memory problems.Subtypes of dementia are not, however, accurately differentiated. (C)1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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| Emner |
