Prevalence of cognitive and functional impairment in community-dwelling elderly: importance of evaluating activities of daily living

Abstract

Illiteracy and poor schooling is still a major problem in developing countries. As life expectancy is increasing steadily, these countries have many illiterate elderly at risk of developing dementia. In fact, illiteracy has been considered a risk factor for dementia, along with age, female gender, and living cional (analfabetos/alfabetizados: OR=15,60; p=0/ OR = 16,40; p=0). Idade e gênero são fatores associados a comprometimento cognitivo/funcional (p<0,05). A prevalência de comprometimento cognitivo/funcional é mais alta que a encontrada em outro estudo brasileiro. Idade, gênero feminino e comprometimento funcional estão diretamente associados a comprometimento cognitivo. O reconhecimento de comprometimento funcional pode ser mais fácil por familiares/profissionais de saúde. Isso reforça a idéia do uso combinado de escalas em rastreamentos de demência. PREVALENCE OF COGNITIVE AND FUNCTIONAL IMPAIRMENT IN COMMUNITY-DWELLING ELDERLYPA L AV R A S -C H AVE: Status funcional, comprometimento cognitivo, epidemiologia, prevalência, fatores de risco

Mini-Mental State Examination norms in a community-dwelling sample of elderly with low schooling in Brazil

“…The entire sample has been described in a previous publication 14 . Only "young elderly" individuals, i.e., subjects 65 to 84 years of age, were included in the present study.…”

“…Those with scores below 5 in the PFAQ were retrieved from the database. Knowing that functional and cognitive impairment are closely related and that combined use of functional and cognitive scales can improve the detection of dementia in the community, the present sample was considered cognitively normal because of their independent performance in activities of daily living (ADL) 14,15,16,17 .…”

“…It has been used in previous Brazilian studies to assess cognitive and functional impairment 14,18,19 and was recently recommended by the Brazilian Academy of Neurology as a tool to screen ADL in community samples 20 . Performance in all activities is assessed by 10 questions with the score ranging from 0 to 3, according to increasing severity.…”

Development, validity, and reliability of the General Activities of Daily Living Scale: a multidimensional measure of activities of daily living for older people

“…The Pfeffer Functional Activities Questionnaire seems to be one of the most commonly used tools for functional assessment aiming at the investigation of IADL performance. [7][8][9][10] One study using the Pfeffer scale 7 found an additive effect between functional scores and the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) for the diagnosis of AD. The Disability Assessment for Dementia was also adapted for Brazil 11 and seems to be useful for the characterization of functionality in frontotemporal dementia and AD, assessing both BADLs and IADLs as well as leisure activities, although these two groups do not show differences in functional performance.…”

Lower mortality rate in people with dementia is associated with better cognitive and functional performance in an outpatient cohort

“…However, to this date there is no direct study on the epidemiology of dementia, depression, and Parkinson's disease in Rio de Janeiro. If one is to calculate prevalence rates of these disorders considering the studies performed in the southern and southeastern regions of the country (most often in Sao Paulo) [3][4][5][6] , the state of Rio de Janeiro should have now 166,320 older persons with dementia (7%).…”