SCREENING FOR EARLY DEMENTIA USING MEMORY COMPLAINTS FROM PATIENTS AND RELATIVES

This study examined whether the subjective impression of memory function might differentiate healthy elderly subjects from patients with memory complaints, and whether memory complaints differed between patients with and without a dementing illness. Both self-assessment and relative's responses on a new memory questionnaire differentiated patient groups from control subjects. The relative's form measuring deterioration in memory function over time identified dementing individuals from those with nondementing causes for their memory complaints. Factor analysis indicated that patient's memory complaints correlated with depression rather than objective memory performance, while relative's ratings correlated with objective memory scores, not depression. Stepwise discriminant function analyses showed that objective memory testing greatly improved specificity but not sensitivity of the subjective memory questionnaire alone. © 1990, American Medical Association. All rights reserved.