[Assessment of Hasegawa's dementia scale for screening and diagnosis of dementia in the elderly].

A sample of 2573 older inhabitants living in Shanghai was investigated on the spot for screening dementia by HDS. Their scale scores on HDS ranged from 3 to 32.5, and the mean score 25.4; according to the 4-grad classification on HDS, 35.3% were classified as normal, 46.3% as borderline, 16.1% as predementia, and 2.3% as definitive of dementia. The assessment by HDS corresponded well with clinical diagnosis of dementia according to DSM-III based on clinical symptoms in 96.3% of 2573 aged. Assessment by HDS was applied to 100 older patients with clinical diagnosis of psychiatric disorders. The scale scores in 76 cases with functional psychiatric disorders and in 24 cases with organic psychosis ranged from 16 to 32.5 and 1 to 28, respectively, and the mean scale score 28.1 and 17.2, respectively. The mean scale score of those with schizophrenia was 29.9, neurosis 30, depression 28.3, SDAT 9.1, MID 15.1, and other dementia 23.6. These results demonstrate that HDS is a practical and valuable tool of assessment for epidemiological, clinical diagnosis and research work to evaluable dementing states of Chinese elderly.