CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 189Dementia and Cognitive Impairment ResearchAlzheimer's disease research and treatmentsPsychological Testing and Assessment

Alzheimer’s disease can be accurately diagnosed in very mildly impaired individuals

Salmon, D. P., Thomas, R. G., Pay, M. M., Booth, A., Hofstetter, C. R., Thal, L. J., Katzman, R.·2002·Neurology
DOI 10.1212/wnl.59.7.1022
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

BACKGROUND: The growing propensity to diagnose AD in individuals with very mild cognitive impairment increases the danger of false-positive diagnostic errors. Unfortunately, there is little systematically acquired information about the accuracy of the AD diagnosis in very mildly impaired patients. OBJECTIVE: To determine the accuracy of the diagnosis of AD in very mildly impaired patients and to identify objective measures that effectively distinguish these patients from elderly normal controls (NC). METHODS: Consecutive patients with Mini-Mental State Examination scores of > or = 24 who received a clinical diagnosis of AD were evaluated annually for at least 3 years. The initial diagnosis was verified or refuted by autopsy or by information obtained in subsequent evaluations. Initial neuropsychological test scores of verified AD patients were compared with those of NC subjects to identify effective diagnostic measures. RESULTS: The diagnosis of AD was confirmed in 98 of 110 (89%) very mildly impaired patients (33/36 by autopsy, 65/74 by disease progression). The diagnosis was inaccurate in 12 patients (11%): Seven were subsequently diagnosed with other neurologic disorders, and five were ultimately found to be normal. Neuropsychological measures of delayed recall, verbal fluency, and global cognitive status (i.e., Mattis Dementia Rating Scale) provided excellent sensitivity (> or = 96%) and specificity (> or = 93%) for differentiating between very mildly impaired AD patients and NC subjects. CONCLUSIONS: When comprehensive assessment procedures are employed, AD can be diagnosed with reasonably high accuracy in very mildly impaired individuals. However, the dementia evaluation should be repeated after approximately 1 year to ensure the accuracy of the initial diagnosis.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1212/wnl.59.7.1022

Cites

43 of 43 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Neuroradiological indexes of hippocampal atrophy and episodic memory deficits are among the most powerful diagnostic indexes of AD from the very early phases.

    “neuroradiological indexes of hippocampal atrophy [3], [4] and, consistent with the well-known role of the hippocampus in human declarative memory [5], episodic memory deficits [6], [7] are among the most powerful diagnostic indexes of AD from the very early phases, corresponding to the clinical condition of amnestic mild cognitive impairment (MCI).”

    From Atrophy of presubiculum and subiculum is the earliest hippocampal anatomical marker of Alzheimer's disease (2015) · cites this paper as [6]

  • In research settings comparable to those in the meta-analysis, clinical diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease has high accuracy, around .90 when verified against autopsy in clinical and community samples.

    “Recent evidence suggests that in research settings comparable to those represented in the meta-analysis, accuracy of the clinical diagnosis is high. Specifically, a diagnostic accuracy around .90 has been reported in both clinical (e.g., Salmon et al., 2002) and community-based (e.g., Massoud et al., 1999) samples when verified against autopsy data.”

    From Cognitive impairment in preclinical Alzheimer's disease: a meta-analysis (2005) · cites this paper as Salmon et al., 2002

  • Semantic verbal fluency contributes to predict future cognitive and functional impairments in the elderly, and predicts the progression from MCI to AD.

    “Semantic verbal fluency contributes to predict future cognitive and functional impairments in the elderly (Salmon et al., 2002; Amieva et al., 2005; Hodges et al., 2006; Aretouli et al., 2011), and predict the progression from MCI to AD (Saxton et al., 2004).”

    From Graph analysis of verbal fluency test discriminate between patients with Alzheimer’s disease, mild cognitive impairment and normal elderly controls (2014) · cites this paper as Salmon et al., 2002

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Authors
Salmon, D. P., Thomas, R. G., Pay, M. M., Booth, A., Hofstetter, C. R., Thal, L. J., & Katzman, R.
Affiliations
University of California San Diego (US)
ORCID
Venue
Neurology
Publisher
Ovid Technologies (Wolters Kluwer Health)
Published
2002-10-08
Volume
59
Issue
7
Pages
1022-1028
ISSN
  • 0028-3878 (ISSN-L)
  • 1526-632X
DOI
10.1212/wnl.59.7.1022
OpenAlex
W2051753984
Cited by
189
References
41
Citations by year
2026: 2 · 2025: 1 · 2024: 6 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 1 · 2021: 2 · 2020: 7 · 2019: 6 · 2018: 3 · 2017: 6 · 2016: 8 · 2015: 7 · 2014: 8 · 2013: 12 · 2012: 11
FWCI
7.15
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Locations
  • Neurology (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
Funders
  • University of California, San Diego
  • National Institute on Aging (P50AG005131)
Topics
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Psychiatry and Mental health › Dementia and Cognitive Impairment Research
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Physiology › Alzheimer's disease research and treatments
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Applied Psychology › Psychological Testing and Assessment
Keywords
Alzheimer's disease, mild cognitive impairment, diagnostic accuracy, false-positive diagnosis, diagnostic errors, neuropsychological assessment, delayed recall, verbal fluency, Mattis Dementia Rating Scale, autopsy confirmation, disease progression, dementia assessment
MeSH terms
Aged, Aged, 80 and over, Alzheimer Disease, Female, Humans, Longitudinal Studies, Male, Middle Aged, Neuropsychological Tests, Regression Analysis

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review