Using telephone and informant assessments to estimate missing Modified Mini-Mental State Exam scores and rates of cognitive decline. The cardiovascular health study.

AIM To estimate an equivalent to the Modified Mini-Mental State Exam (3MSE), and to compare changes in the 3MSE with and without the estimated scores. METHODS Comparability study on a subset of 405 participants, aged >or=70 years, from the Cardiovascular Health Study (CHS), a longitudinal study in 4 United States communities. The 3MSE, the Telephone Interview for Cognitive Status (TICS) and the Informant Questionnaire on Cognitive Decline in the Elderly (IQCODE) were administered within 30 days of one another. Regression models were developed to predict the 3MSE score from the TICS and/or IQCODE, and the predicted values were used to estimate missing 3MSE scores in longitudinal follow-up of 4,274 CHS participants. RESULTS The TICS explained 67% of the variability in 3MSE scores, with a correlation of 0.82 between predicted and observed scores. The IQCODE alone was not a good estimate of 3MSE score, but improved the model fit when added to the TICS model. Using estimated 3MSE scores classified more participants with low cognition, and rates of decline were greater than when only the observed 3MSE scores were considered. CONCLUSIONS 3MSE scores can be reliably estimated from the TICS, with or without the IQCODE. Incorporating these estimates captured more cognitive decline in older adults.