The frontal assessment battery as a tool for evaluation of frontal lobe dysfunction in patients with Parkinson disease.

BACKGROUND: Frontal-type cognitive deficits are common in patients with Parkinson disease (PD). The Frontal Assessment Battery (FAB) was developed to assess frontal lobe functions. However, many studies found that it also correlated with a variety of other general neuropsychological tests.
OBJECTIVES: To evaluate whether the FAB has an added value over the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) and other bedside neuropsychological tests in reflecting cognitive deficits in patients with PD.
METHODS: Seventy-two consecutive patients with PD underwent cognitive assessment including the FAB, the MMSE, and a variety of other neuropsychological tests. Correlations were examined using the Spearman's r.
RESULTS: Highly significant correlations were found between the total FAB score and tests of attention, executive functions, and memory. To evaluate the contribution of the FAB beyond that of the MMSE, partial correlation was used. Analyses revealed that the FAB still correlated with most of the tests. Dividing the patients according to the median MMSE score revealed that the high correlation between the FAB and the MMSE was preserved in the low MMSE group, while in the high MMSE group the correlation was relatively low. In the high MMSE group, the FAB correlated with 11 tests compared to the MMSE that correlated with one (P < .001), while in the low MMSE group the number of correlations was 13 versus 7, respectively (P = .05).
CONCLUSIONS: In our sample of patients with PD, the FAB correlated with dysfunction in a variety of cognitive domains including attention, memory, and executive functions. The FAB has an added value over the MMSE, particularly among nondemented patients, an advantage that can be used in clinical practice.