Brief informant interviews to screen for dementia: The AD8 and quick dementia rating system

Abstract

The AD8 is an informant-based dementia screening test designed to capture intra-individual change in cognitive and functional abilities. Taking only 2-3 min, the AD8 is highly correlated with gold standard evaluations including the Clinical Dementia Rating scale, neuropsychological testing, and cerebrospinal fluid and imaging biomarkers of Alzheimer’s disease. The AD8 has validated in a variety of clinical settings across the world. As the AD8 is in a Yes/No format, it may not be applicable to staging severity of longitudinal follow-up. The Quick Dementia Rating System is a ten-item multiple choice questionnaire that takes 3-5 min and provides a quantitative assessment of cognitive, functional, and behavioral domains to stage dementia severity. Combining a brief informant assessment with a brief performance measure should markedly increase the ability to detect and stage dementia and other cognitive impairments in a variety of clinical, research, and community settings.