Study: 10-minute cognitive test MoCA helps predict long-term motor, cognitive and mortality outcomes after stroke

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Sim­ple test may help pre­dict long-term out­come after stroke (Sci­ence Daily):

“We found that this test, which takes less than 10 min­utes, can help pre­dict whether peo­ple will have impaired think­ing skills, prob­lems that keep them from per­form­ing dai­ly tasks such as bathing and dress­ing and even whether they will be more like­ly to die,” said study author Mar­tin Dich­gans, MD, of Lud­wig-Max­i­m­il­ians Uni­ver­si­ty in Munich, Germany…The study found that those who had think­ing prob­lems with­in one week of the stroke were sev­en times more like­ly to die dur­ing the three years of the study than those who did not have think­ing prob­lems. The sur­vival rate for those with think­ing prob­lems after three years was 83 per­cent, while the rate was 97 per­cent for those with no think­ing prob­lems ear­ly on.

Those with think­ing prob­lems on the first test were also five times more like­ly to have prob­lems with their motor skills than those who did not have think­ing prob­lems ear­ly on. By three years after the stroke, 29 per­cent of those with think­ing prob­lems on the first test had prob­lems with their motor skills, com­pared to 5 per­cent of those who did not have think­ing prob­lems ear­ly on.”

The Study:

Ear­ly MoCA pre­dicts long-term cog­ni­tive and func­tion­al out­come and mor­tal­i­ty after stroke (Neu­rol­o­gy). From the abstract:

  • Objec­tive: To exam­ine whether the Mon­tre­al Cog­ni­tive Assess­ment (MoCA) admin­is­tered with­in 7 days after stroke pre­dicts long-term cog­ni­tive impair­ment, func­tion­al impair­ment, and mortality.
  • Con­clu­sion: Ear­ly cog­ni­tive test­ing by MoCA pre­dicts long-term cog­ni­tive out­come, func­tion­al out­come, and mor­tal­i­ty after stroke. Our results sup­port rou­tine use of the MoCA in stroke patients.

The Study in Context: