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Published on: January 24, 2020
Influence of education level on MMSE and MoCA scores of elderly inpatients
Yehuan Wu1, Yi Zhang1, Xiaofang Yuan1
1Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, The First People's Hospital of Changzhou &Third Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University, Changzhou, China.
Objective:
The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of education level on MMSE and MoCA scores of elderly inpatients.
Method:
This is a cross-sectional study. A total of 260 elderly inpatients were evaluated by the MMSE and MoCA sequentially.
Results:
The total MMSE scores were highly correlated with the total MoCA scores (r = 0.7629, p < 0.0001), and were correlated with the length of education (r = 0.2723, p < 0.0001). The total MoCA scores were also correlated with the length of education (r = 0.3323, p < 0.0001). Meanwhile, MoCA was also used to reevaluate the elderly inpatients with normal MMSE scores at different education levels. There were no significant differences at different education levels (χ2=1.351, p = 0.5090). Finally, we analyzed the diagnostic consistency of MMSE and MoCA at different education levels, and the results showed that education level was closely related to the consistency of the diagnoses based on the MMSE and MoCA (χ2=10.23, p = 0.0368).
Conclusions:
In general, the results of both the MMSE and MoCA were influenced by education level, and this effect was more obvious for the MoCA. However, in the cognitive assessment of elderly patients, the ability to identify impairment with the MoCA is obviously superior to that with the MMSE.
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