Cognitive impairment and symptoms of depression among geriatric patients in a tertiary care unit in Sri Lanka

Validation of the Sinhala version of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment in screening for dementia

“…Apart from lack of public knowledge about dementia, lack of awareness by the medical profession regarding diagnostic criteria and cognitive testing contributes to low rates of detection. In Sri Lanka in a general medical ward 55.2% of patients over 65 years who had a secondary education scored at or below 23 on the MMSE [3]. Many of these patients would not have been identified by clinicians as requiring interventions for cognitive impairment.…”

Undiagnosed depression among older adults living in a semi urban community in Southern Sri Lanka

“…Studies involving older patients report high prevalence rates of depression ranging from 22.4% to 60% (11,12). However our study sample comprised of comparatively healthy older adults due to exclusion criteria we used.…”

“…Study of patients aged 65 years and above admitted to National Hospital Sri Lanka (NHSL) found that 40% of the study sample have depression (10). In another study involving 100 subjects over 65 years of age admitted to NHSL found that over 60% of the sample met criteria for depression (11). A study on outdoor patients presented to the same hospital showed the prevalence of depression as 22.4% (12) However, in this study, the rate of prevalence was lower in older age group (above 61 years) compared to their younger counterparts (aged below 30 years).…”

A clinico-epidemiological study of cognitive function status of community-dwelling elderly

“…[ 14 ] This poor performance in our study group may be due to illiteracy, nutritional factor or poor development of cognition. [ 24 ] In rural illiterate population, HMSE has low positive predictive value if cut-off for dementia is 23. Our study suggest that cut-off of HMSE score should be 17 (10 th percentile) for illiterate population.…”