New scoring on dementia screening recommended for more highly
educated peopleApril 15, 2009 A recent study by researchers from
the Texas Tech University Health Science Center and the Mayo
Clinic Department of Medicine shows that raising the Mini-Mental
State Examination (MMSE, a standard screening tool for dementia)
"cut score" for more highly educated people increases the early
accuracy of results for this group. Earlier identification of
cognitive decline could aid in their treatment. Scores on the
MMSE decrease with advanced age and less education. The standard
MMSE cut score is 24, meaning that a score of 23 or below
indicates possible dementia. However, a review of data for 4,248
people, including 1,141 with 16 or more years of education,
suggests that a more appropriate cut score for college-educated
individuals is 27. Raising the MMSE cut score for this group to
27 increased the accuracy of the classification rate from 89 to
90 percent and provided an "optimal balance" of sensitivity and
specificity, t