Session Information
Date: Wednesday, June 7, 2017
Session Title: Cognitive Disorders
Session Time: 1:15pm-2:45pm
Location: Exhibit Hall C
Objective: To investigate the usefulness of the trail making test (TMT)-A and TMT-B in the cognitive evaluation of a Brazilian sample of patients with PD.
Background: Around 30-40% of patients with PD fill the diagnosis criteria for dementia. Patients with PD with dementia (PDD) usually present cognitive dysfunction and behavior variances, commonly apathy and executive dysfunction. It highlights the importance of applying a suitable evaluation of executive function in these patients.
Methods: Forty-one patients with PD (26 male/15 female; Mean age = 64.4 ± 9.7 years; Schooling = 7.2 ± 4.2 years; MMSE = 24.21 ± 4.0) were submitted to a comprehensive clinical evaluation, including motor, cognitive and neuropsychiatry symptoms, according to the MDS recommendations [1-2]. The cognitive evaluation included the TMT-A and TMT-B .
Results: Patients with PD presented with great difficulty in executing the TMT. Only 36 patients were capable of finishing the TMT-A, in 92.03 ± 53.9 seconds. This value was above the normative data for the Brazilian population (56.4 ± 20.1 seconds). In addition, only 32 subjects could finish the TMT-B. Here again, patients with DP took longer than the expected to complete the test, according to the normative data (172.3 ± 150.7 and 133.1 ± 51.8 seconds, respectively). It is worth mentioning that TMT scores were not associated with verbal fluency test, and the attention and initiative/perseveration items of the Mattis Dementia Rating Scale.
Conclusions: Our data suggest that the TMT is not appropriate for the cognitive evaluation of cognition in PD. In our sample, the performance at the TMT was not associated with attention and executive tasks. More studies are needed in this regard.
References: [1] Dubois B et al. Diagnostic procedures for Parkinson’s disease dementia: recommendations from the movement disorder society task force. Mov Disord. 2007;22(16):2314-24.
[2] Goldman JG et al. Diagnosing PD-MCI by MDS task force criteria: How many and which neuropsychological tests? Mov Disord. 2015;30(3):402-6.
To cite this abstract in AMA style:
E. Carreira, E. CARREIRA, A. PRADO, N. BRAZ, F. TAVARES, N. ROCHA, L. DE SOUZA, F. CARDOSO, A. TEIXEIRA. Difficulties in executing the MDS recommendations in the brazilian population [abstract]. Mov Disord. 2017; 32 (suppl 2). https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/difficulties-in-executing-the-mds-recommendations-in-the-brazilian-population/. Accessed May 12, 2025.« Back to 2017 International Congress
MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/difficulties-in-executing-the-mds-recommendations-in-the-brazilian-population/