Louis B, Harwood D, Hope T, Jacoby R
University of Oxford Department of Psychiatry, Warneford Hospital, Oxford, UK.
Int J Geriatr Psychiatry. 1999 Nov;14(11):941-5.
To determine whether elderly 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.
DESIGN/PARTICIPANTS: Twenty-nine patients with an 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 initial assessment.
Interviews took place in patients' homes, but all subjects had been recruited while medical inpatients in a general hospital 17-24 months previously.
The IQCODE and clinical interview to make DSM-III-R diagnosis of dementia.
Ten of the study group and one control had developed dementia since the original assessment.
Non-demented elderly medical inpatients with an admission IQCODE score of >3.31 are more likely to develop dementia than those with an IQCODE score of <3.31. The IQCODE is a sensitive tool for detecting early dementia.
