SCREENING FOR POSTSTROKE COGNITIVE IMPAIRMENT VIA MINI MENTAL STATE EXAMINATION AND MONTREAL COGNITIVE ASSESSMENT SCALE

Objective: The aim of our study is to examine cognitive performance after mild stroke via Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) and Montreal cognitive assessment scale (MoCA) and to compare the results.Material and methods: We examined 54 patients with mild stroke (aged 52 to 72 (mean 63.17, SD 5.96); 34 males and 20 females) and 54 controls, adjusted by age, sex and education level. All subjects were tested via MMSE (Bulgarian version) and MoCa (Bulgarian version). Data was collected in the single step model at the 90th day after stroke incident for patients and at the day of obtaining informed consent for controls. Results: Patients have poorer performance on both MMSE and MoCa than controls. MoCa has comparatively good discriminative validity and sensitivity.Conclusions: Although MMSE is one of the classical screening tools for cognitive impairment widely used in Bulgaria, other screening tools should not be ignored. On the basis of our results, MoCa is also a good screening instrument, especially for poststroke cognitive impairment.