Effects of common chronic medical conditions on psychometric tests used to diagnose minimal hepatic encephalopathy.

Effects of common chronic medical conditions on psychometric tests used to diagnose minimal hepatic encephalopathy.
Metab Brain Dis. 2015 Oct 5;
Authors: Lauridsen MM, Poulsen L, Rasmussen CK, Høgild M, Nielsen MK, de Muckadell OB, Vilstrup H
Abstract
Many chronic medical conditions are accompanied by cognitive disturbances but these have only to a very limited extent been psychometrically quantified. An exception is liver cirrhosis where hepatic encephalopathy is an inherent risk and mild forms are diagnosed by psychometric tests. The preferred diagnostic test battery in cirrhosis is often the Continuous Reaction Time (CRT) and the Portosystemic Encephalopathy (PSE) tests but the effect on these of other medical conditions is not known. We aimed to examine the effects of common chronic (non-cirrhosis) medical conditions on the CRT and PSE tests. We studied 15 patients with heart failure (HF), 15 with end stage renal failure (ESRF), 15 with dysregulated type II diabetes (DMII), 15 with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and 15 healthy persons. We applied the CRT test, which is a 10-min computerized test measuring sustained attention and reaction time stability and the PSE test, which is a paper-pencil test battery consisting of 5 subtests. We found that a high fraction of the patients with HF (8/15, 0.002) or COPD (7/15, p = 0.006) had pathological CRT test results; and COPD patients also frequently had an abnormal PS...

Source: Diabetes Metab - October 5, 2015 Category: Endocrinology Authors: Lauridsen MM, Poulsen L, Rasmussen CK, Høgild M, Nielsen MK, de Muckadell OB, Vilstrup H Tags: Metab Brain Dis Source Type: research