Objectives
The Caregiver’s Inventory Neuropsychological Diagnosis Dementia (CINDD) is an easy tool designed
to quantify cognitive, behavioural and functional deficits of patients with cognitive impairment. Aim of the present
study was to analyse the psychometric properties of the CINDD in Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and Dementia
(D).
Design, setting and participants
The CINDD, composed by 9 sub-domains, was administered to fifty-six caregivers
of patients with different types of dementia (D) and 44 caregivers of patients with MCI. All patients underwent an
extensive neuropsychological assessment, the Neuropsychiatric Inventory (NPI) and functional autonomy scales.
The reliability, convergent construct validity and possible cut-off of CINND were measured by Cronbach’s alpha (α),
Pearson’s correlation and ROC analysis, respectively.
Results
The D and MCI patients differed only for age (p=0.006). The internal consistency of CINDD was high (α=
0.969). The α-value for each CINDD domain was considered acceptable, except the mood domain (α=0.209). The
CINDD total score correlated with cognitive screening tests; each domain of the CINDD correlated with the
corresponding score from either tests or NPI (p<0.05), except for visuo-spatial perception skills and apathy. A
screening cut-off equal to 59, can be used discriminate D from MCI (Sensitivity=0.70, Specificity=0.57).
Conclusion
The CINDD is a feasible, accurate and reliable tool for the assessment of cognitive and behavioural
difficulties in patients with different degree of cognitive impairment. It may be used to quantify and monitor
caregiver-reported ecological data in both clinical and research settings.