Discriminative validity of an abbreviated Semantic Verbal Fluency Test

: Semantic verbal fluency (SVF) is one of the most widely used tests for cognitive assessment due to its diagnostic utility (DU). Objective: our objective is to evaluate the DU to detect cognitive impairment (CI) of a short version of the SVF applied in 30 seconds (SVF1-30). Methods: a prospective sample of consecutive patients evaluated in a Neurology Unit between December 2016 and December 2017 were assessed with the Global Deterioration Scale (GDS), 30-second and 60-second SVF tests (animals), and the Fototest, which includes a fluency task of people's names. The DU for CI was evaluated by the area under the ROC curve and effect size ("d" Cohen). Resultados: foram incluidos 1012 sujeitos (256 CC e 395 demencia). O SVF1-30 mostrou uma boa correlacao com o estagio GDS. A UD de SVF1-30 e identico ao da versao classica (SVFtotal) para CC (0,89 ± 0,01; p > 0,50) e sem diferenca significativa para demencia (0,85 ± 0,01 vs. 0,86 ± 0,01; p > 0,15). Discussion: the DU of SVF1-30 is similar to that of the SVFtotal, allowing a reduction in examination time with no loss of discriminative capacity.