COMPARISON OF MENTAL STATUS TESTS - IMPLICATIONS FOR ALZHEIMERS PATIENTS AND THEIR CAREGIVERS

Most existing measures commonly used to determine cognitive dysfunctio n in demented persons exclude important pieces of information. In an e ffort to address this deficiency, many Alzheimer's disease programs ha ve combined items from the Blessed Information, Orientation, Memory an d Concentration Test with those of the more established Mini-Mental St ate Exam. While the expansion may be clinically helpful, results are t ypically presented in the form of summary scores that ignore the issue of multidimensionality. Drawing upon data from 201 elderly patients a fflicted with Alzheimer's disease and their adult child caregivers, th is study examined the factorial structure of the combined Blessed Fols tein Instruments. The factor-derived scores are compared with summary scores in terms of their association with functional status of the pat ients and with caregiver stress and burden.