Value of the Mini-Mental State Examination and informants' data for the detection of dementia in geriatric outpatients

The Dutch version of the Mini-Mental State Examination was administered to 138 elderly patients who were referred to a geriatric outpatient clinic for a variety of reasons. An optimal cut-off point of 24/25 was found for the detection of dementia. At this cut-off point, the Mini-Mental State Examination was 87.6% sensitive and 81.6% specific in detecting dementia. The discriminative validity was influenced by education and by the presence of psychiatric disorders other than dementia. Informants' data showed better sensitivity and specificity than the Mini-Mental State Examination for the detection of dementia. The findings suggest that informants' data are a primary source of information for the detection of dementia in geriatric outpatients.