Centre for Policy on Ageing



Can an informant questionnaire be used to predict the development of dementia in medical inpatients?
Author(s)	Beverley Louis, Daniel Harwood, Tony Hope
Journal title	International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, vol 14, no 11, November 1999
Pages	pp 941-945
Keywords	In-patients ; Medical wards ; Cognitive impairment ; Dementia ; Screening ; Evaluation.
Annotation	The authors sought to determine whether older medical inpatients without dementia who score >3.31 on the short form of the Informant Questionnaire on Cognitive Decline in the Elderly (IQCODE) are at an increased risk of developing dementia. 29 patients with IQCODE score of >3.31 without dementia and 29 age- and sex-matched controls, from an original sample of 201 medical inpatients over 65 were examined 17-24 months after original assessment. Interviews took place in patients' homes, but all subjects had been recruited while medical inpatients in a general hospital 17-24 months previously. Ten of the study group and one control had developed dementia since the original assessment, indicating that those with an admission IQCODE score of >3.31 had increased risk of developing dementia. However, the study was small with sources of possible bias, and requires replication with a larger sample. (RH).
Accession Number	CPA-000114224 A
Classmark	LF7: LD4: E4: EA: 3V: 4C
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