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Updated: Apr 9, 2026
A Machine Learning Approach to Design an Efficient Selective Screening of Mild Cognitive Impairment
Published on: January 11, 2020
The Brief Cognitive Status Examination (BCSE): Comparing Diagnostic Utility and Equating Scores to the Mini-Mental
Robin C Hilsabeck1, James A Holdnack2, C Munro Cullum3
1Psychology Service at South Texas Veterans Health Care System and Department of Psychiatry, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, USA hilsabeck@uthscsa.edu.
Abstract:
The study purpose was to compare the diagnostic utility of the Brief Cognitive Status Exam (BCSE) to that of the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) and to develop equated scores to facilitate comparisons. One hundred and eighty-two patients underwent cognitive evaluation and were placed into three groups: dementia (DEM), cognitive impairment, no dementia (CIND), and no cognitive impairment (NCI). One hundred and eighty-two healthy controls from the BCSE standardization sample served as a comparison group. On both measures, the DEM group obtained significantly lower scores than the other two groups, and the CIND group scored significantly lower than the NCI group. The BCSE was more sensitive in all clinical groups, although at extremely low scores, the two tests displayed similar sensitivity. Results indicate the BCSE has diagnostic utility as a cognitive screening measure in a mixed clinical sample and is more sensitive at detecting cognitive impairment, particularly milder levels, than the MMSE.
