In everyday clinical practice, health professionals can not always rely on highly trained neuropsychologists, or specific material for the assessment of certain cognitive domains. In other cases, the lengthy nature of comprehensive and complete neuropsychological batteries make it impossible for them to be administered in busy clinical settings. With these ideas in mind, INECO's research group developed the INECO Frontal Screening (IFS), a brief screening tool to detect executive dysfunction in patients with dementia, which was shown to have high senstivity and specificity to differentiate health controls from patients with neurodegenerative disorders. As well, the IFS showed strong capabilities to distinguish between different types of dementia, making its use in clinical settings especially relevant for differential diagnosis. Because of this strong potential in both research and clinical settings, the Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society has accepted the article that validates the IFS for its publication on the September 2009 issue.

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Original Abstract

INECO Frontal Screening (IFS): A brief, sensitive, and specific tool to assess executive functions in dementia

Although several brief sensitive screening tools are available to detect cognitive dysfunction, few have been developed to quickly assess executive functioning (EF) per se. We designed a new brief tool to evaluate EF in neurodegenerative diseases. Patients with an established diagnosis of behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD; n = 22), Alzheimer disease (AD; n = 25), and controls (n = 26) were assessed with a cognitive screening test, the INECO Frontal Screening (IFS), and EF tests. Clinical Dementia Rating Scale (CDR) scores were obtained for all patients. Internal consistency of the IFS was very good (Cronbach's alpha = .80). IFS total (out of 30 points) was 27.4 (SD = 1.6) for controls, 15.6 (SD = 4.2) for bvFTD, and 20.1 (SD = 4.7) for AD. Using a cutoff of 25 points, sensitivity of the IFS was 96.2%, and specificity 91.5% in differentiating controls from patients with dementia. The IFS correlated significantly with the CDR and executive tasks. The IFS total discriminated controls from demented patients, and bvFTD from AD. IFS is a brief, sensitive, and specific tool for the detection of executive dysfunction associated with neurodegenerative diseases. The IFS may be helpful in the differential diagnosis of FTD and AD.