Objective: The aim of this study was to compare the efficiency  of the short form of Montreal Cognitive Assessment (s-MoCa) which has been validated in English with the original MOCA in Brazilian Portuguese, as well as compare the scores of PD patients those of healthy control subjects.

Background: Cognitive deficit is a highly prevalent non-motor symptom of Parkinson’s disease (PD)  which has a significant impact on the quality of life. It is estimated that about 25% to 38.2% of individuals in early stages of the disease present cognitive deficits. However, rapid and easy-to-apply screening tests are being used in the outpatient setting in order to carry out an effective screening of the patients who need a complete evaluation.

Method: A cross-sectional, pilot study was carried out with 148 individuals, 27 of whom were recruited from a reference center specialized in Movement Disorders; these participants had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease and 121 healthy individuals independent of the community from Porto Alegre, Brazil. A descriptive analysis was performed through absolute and relative frequency measurements and calculation of the distribution of the variables by means of standard deviations and means. Additionally, the linearity assumptions of the data were tested through the Shapiro Wilks test and of equal variances through the Test of Levene. Once these assumptions were satisfied, Pearson’s correlation was used to analyze the coefficients and comparisons between the groups. The level of statistical significance considered was 0.01. The statistical software used was SPSS, version 21.

Results: The mean age of the individuals analyzed was 63.2 dp ± 11.8 and schooling was 7.3 dp ± 4.3 years of study. The mean score on the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) was 24.3 dp ± 4.6, the MoCA was 19.43 dp ± 6.01 and the s-MoCa was 8.11 dp ± 4.1. The correlation between the tests is 0.942 (p <0.000), among individuals with Parkinson's disease is 0.922 (p <0.000) and among healthy subjects in the community is 0.944 (p <0.000), indicating very strong correlation in this analyses.

Conclusion: The s-MoCa in Brazilian Portuguese presented strong correlations with the English version and results suggest detect cognitives deficits as well as the original version. More validity and reliability analyzes should be performed to confirm these findings.

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/applicability-of-short-form-of-montreal-cognitive-assessment-to-brazilian-portuguese/