A new simple score (ABS) for assessing behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia

In addition to cognitive impairment, behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD) are another important aspect of most dementia patients. This study was designed for a new simple assessment of BPSD. We first employed a clinical survey for the local community with sending an inquiry letter to all members (n=129) of dementia caregiver society, and then attempted to create a new BPSD score for dementia with 10 BPSD items. This new simple BPSD score was compared to a standard-detailed BPSD score neuropsychiatric inventory (NPI) for a possible correlation (n=792) and a time to complete (n=136). Inter-rater reliability was examined comparing scores between main and second caregivers (n=70) for AD. Based on the clinical survey for local caregivers, a new BPSD score for dementia (ABS, Abe's BPSD score) was newly created, in which each BPSD item was allotted by an already-weighted score (maximum 1-9) based on the frequency and severity, and was finalized with taking temporal occurrences into account. ABS was filled by the main caregiver with a full score of 44, was well correlated with NPI (r=0.716, **p<0.01) in 792 AD patients (age 78.6 ± 7.0 years, MMSE 19.0 ± 5.9), and took a shorter time as only 56.8 ± 38.8s (**p<0.01) than NPI score (132.7 ± 94.0 s) with 136 AD patients. A high inter-rater reliability was obtained (r=0.964, **p<0.01) with a little smaller score (0.877 time) of ABS in secondary than the main caregivers. ABS provides a new simple and quick test for BPSD assessment, with a good correlation to NPI but a shorter time, and with a high inter-rater reliability. Thus ABS is useful for evaluating BPSD for mild to moderate dementia patients.