Improving the screening power of the cognitive abilities screening instrument, Chinese version.

The purpose of this study was to find means to increase the power of the Cognitive Abilities Screening Instrument, Chinese version (CASI C-2.0) in the screening of dementia. In assessing the performance of the CASI in dementia screening, it is a common practice to determine a cutoff score for the total CASI score and report the respective sensitivity and specificity. In this paper, we showed that an alternative scoring system, i.e., a weighted sum of the scores from the 9 domains in the CASI C-2.0, may improve its effectiveness in screening. In particular, short-term memory and orientation appeared to be the 2 most relevant domains and their combined score was shown to be more effective than the total score in screening dementia. We also showed that such a scoring system could be kept the same across examinees with different demographic backgrounds. With the weighted scoring system of the 9 domains for patients from the targeted population, we hope to make the CASI a clinically more powerful tool in screening dementia. 2004 S. Karger AG, Basel