[O-DEM: a new cognitive screening in patients with hearing loss]

Hearing loss is a significant risk factor for dementia. To date, cognitive impairment and dementia in patients with hearing impairment (HI) cannot be adequately diagnosed by commonly administered cognitive screening tests due to sensory impairments. Therefore, an adapted screening is needed. The aim of the present study was to develop and evaluate a cognitive screening for people with HI.

The new cognitive screening, called O‑DEM, entails a word fluency test, the Trail Making Test A (TMT-A), and a subtraction task. First, the O‑DEM was tested in a large clinical sample (N = 2837) of people without subjective HI. In a second step, the O‑DEM was evaluated in 213 patients with objectively assessed HI and compared with the Hearing-Impaired Montreal Cognitive Assessment (HI-MoCA).

The results indicate that the O‑DEM subtests significantly discriminate between participants with no, mild, and moderate to severe cognitive impairment. Based on the mean and standard deviation of the participants without cognitive impairment, a transformation of the raw scores was performed and a total score with a maximum value of 10 was determined. In the second part of the study, the O‑DEM was shown to be as sensitive as the HI-MoCA in differentiating between people with and without cognitive impairment.

Compared to other screenings, the O‑DEM is a quickly administrable screening for the detection of mild and moderate cognitive impairment in people with HI.