Brief cognitive assessment of Alzheimer's disease in advanced stages: Proposal for a Brazilian version of the Short Battery for Severe Impairment (SIB-8)

The measurement of cognitive abilities of patients with severe dementia can serve a wide range of methodological and clinical needs. OBJECTIVE To validate a proposed severe impairment battery SIB-8 for a Brazilian population sample as part of the neuropsychological assessment of patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) in advanced stages. METHODS After a systematic process of translation and back-translation, the SIB-8 was applied to 95 patients with AD at different stages; moderate, moderately severe and severe according to FAST subdivisions (5, 6 and 7), with scores on the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) of between 5 and 15 and followed by the Division of Behavioral Neurology and the Center for Aging Brain of the Federal University of São Paulo - UNIFESP. RESULTS Inferential data revealed that the SIB-8 instrument behaved differently at each stage of the disease with a statistical value of sensitivity p<0.001, gradually reflecting the expected course of the dementia, inherent with the decline of cognitive functions. CONCLUSION Findings indicated that the SIB-8 is a useful tool for the evaluation and prospective comparison of AD patients in advanced stages, retaining its original characteristics in our population.