Background: The Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) and the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) are brief cognitive screening tools that have been developed for the screening of patients with Mild Cognitive Impairment.
Methods: A total of 105 patients were included in this study, aged 53-89 years, with acute ischemic stroke admitted to hospital and fell into two groups: stroke patients with cognitive impairment (SCI) and controls with no cognitive impairment (n-SCI). The patient's characteristics are collected and regression analyses were performed to predict cognitive impairments. We use MMSE and MoCA assessment as prognostic indices for cognitive impairments of patient's with stroke.
Objectives: Our aim was to examine the effectiveness of the MMSE and MoCA in screening cognitive impairments.
Main results: There were significant difference among the two groups in the prevalence of diabetes mellitus (p < 0.05) and intracranial atherosclerosis (p < 0.05). A linear regression determined that the age, diabetes, intracranial atherosclerosis predicted the cognitive impairments. The ROC results for MoCA with an AUC of 0.882 and the corresponding results for MMSE show a similar AUC of 0.839.
Conclusion: Neuropsychological performance of stroke patients was influenced by biological and demographic variables: age, diabetes and intracranial atherosclerosis. The MoCA and MMSE are both reliable assessments for the diagnosis of cognitive impairment after stroke.
Keywords: MMSE; MoCA; acute ischemic stroke.