Previous research has found that people diagnosed with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) are at a higher risk of developing dementia. A recent meta-analysis reported a 12.4% prevalence of dementia in Europe and 5–9% in Spain in people older than 65. The number of people living with dementia worldwide is currently estimated at 50 million, with dementia being the leading cause of disability and dependence during aging. Since age is the main risk factor for dementia, the increase in the proportion of older people is associated with an increase in the incidence and prevalence of cognitive impairment and dementia. According to the Spanish National Statistics Institute, Spain is one of the countries with the highest rate of older people in Europe, with 18.58% of people aged 65 years or older. As reported by the Eurostat database, 20% of people in Europe are aged 65 or older and this percentage is estimated to increase to 30% by 2070. The United Nations predicted an increase from 9% in 2020 to around 16% in 2050. The population aged 65 years or older is expected to rise worldwide in the coming decades. We provide a friendly calculator for use in neuropsychological assessment in cognitively active Spanish people aged 55 or older. Conclusions: Normative data obtained from the general population might not be sensitive to identify low scores in cognitively active older adults, incorrectly classifying them as cognitively normal compared to the less-active population. Although the proportion of low scores was similar between normative datasets, there was no agreement in the identification of cognitively impaired individuals. Results: The effects of age, sex, and education varied across neuropsychological measures. The base rate of low scores for SABIEX normative data was compared to the base rate of low scores using published normative data obtained from the general population. Z-scores for the discrepancy between observed and predicted scores were used to identify low scores. The model predicting TMT-B scores also included TMT-A scores. Raw data for Digit Span (DS), Letters and Numbers (LN), the Trail Making Test (TMT), and the Symbol Digit Modalities Test (SDMT) were regressed on age, sex, and education. Method: Regression-based normative data were calculated from a sample of 103 non-depressed independent community-dwelling adults aged 55 or older (67% women).
In this work, we developed normative data for the neuropsychological assessment of independent and cognitively active Spanish older adults over 55 years of age.
0 kommentar(er)
