Characteristics of Two Telephone Screens for Cognitive Impairment

We studied 56 subjects, 30 patients with a clinical diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and 26 healthy controls, using two telephone screens for cognitive impairment, a self-report interview referred to as the TELE and the Telephone Interview for Cognitive Status (TICS). The sensitivity and specificity of the TELE to differentiate AD patients from healthy controls was 90.0 and 88.5% and those of the TICS were 86.7 and 88.5%, respectively. When receiver operator characteristic curves were constructed, the area under the curve for the TELE was 96.0% (SE 2.4%) and for the TICS 90.3% (SE 4.2%). Pearson's correlation between the TELE and the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) was 0.87 (p < 0.0001) and between the TICS and the MMSE 0.86 (p < 0.0001). The correlation between the TELE and the sum of the boxes of the Clinical Dementia Rating scale (CDR-SB) was -0.71 (p < 0.0001) and -0.75 between the TICS and the CDR-SB (p < 0.0001). These results indicate that both screens are sensitive and specific instruments for differentiating AD patients from healthy controls and have a strong correlation with face-to-face measures of cognitive function.