Acurácia diagnóstica de funcionalidade e desempenho cognitivo no contínuo de comprometimento cognitivo no envelhecimento

• Ano de defesa: 2017
• Autor(a) principal: Fransen, Natália Lemos
• Orientador(a): Kochhann, Renata
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: por
• Instituição de defesa: Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul
• Programa de Pós-Graduação: Programa de Pós-Graduação em Psicologia
• Departamento: Escola de Humanidades
• País: Brasil
• Palavras-chave em Português: Desempenho Funcional; Desempenho Cognitivo; Envelhecimento; Comprometimento Cognitivo Leve; Doença de Alzheimer
• Área do conhecimento CNPq: CIENCIAS HUMANAS::PSICOLOGIA
• Link de acesso: http://tede2.pucrs.br/tede2/handle/tede/7226

Neurodegenerative disorders, such as Alzheimer's disease (AD), have a prevalence increasing considerably. It is the only clinical cases that include among the diagnostic procedures the neuropsychological evaluation as mandatory to confirm cognitive and / or functional decline in these individuals. The evaluation of the functionality can be performed directly (eg, Direct Assessment of Functional Status - Revised (DAFS-R)) or indirect (eg, Activities of Daily Living Questionnaire (ADL-Q)). The present master's thesis consists of two studies: (1) aiming at comparing functional performance through direct versus indirect evaluation, and comparing the accuracy of functional performance between groups; And (2) in order to investigate the relationship between the cognitive domains (mnemonic, linguistic, attentional and executive) and direct functionality, as well as whether and how different cognitive domains predict functional performance. The initial sample consisted of 123 individuals, after examining the exclusion criteria. The sample of both studies was divided into 90 elderly adults, divided into three groups: n = 27 controls, n = 35 patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) = 28 With mild AD. In the study (1) the direct (DAFS-R) and indirect (ADL-Q) evaluations were used and in (2) the instruments used were: Rey Auditory-Verbal Learning Test; Brief Neuropsychological Assessment Instrument (prospective memory, semantic memory, sentence span of words in sentences, inverse count); Wechsler intelligence scale for adults (digits, sequence of numbers and letters, codes and look for symbols); Hayling test; Track test; Montreal-Toulouse Battery for Language Assessment (listening and speaking); Montreal Assessment of Communication Battery (free verbal, semantic and phonological fluency) and DAFS-R. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 20.0 was used for the analyzes. In the study (1), MANCOVA was used to verify the performance of each direct functional domain of the participants in the groups and for those who differed, ROC curves were performed to verify the diagnostic accuracy of the functional scales between the groups. In the direct evaluation, it was observed a better accuracy to differentiate MCI from AD, as well as good accuracy to differentiate MCI controls; The indirect evaluation did not differentiate MCI controls, but showed good accuracy to differentiate MCI from AD. With this, the direct evaluation instrument proves to be extremely important in the elderly who do not have an informant. In the study (2) Spearman correlation was performed between DAFS-R and cognitive components and Stepwise linear regression for all strong correlations found. The domains that most predicted functionality were working memory and late episodic memory. Thus, it can be observed that both performance of executive functions (working memory) and mnemonic is relevant for the functional performance of elderly individuals. In this way, it can be concluded that the evaluation of the direct functional performance presented discriminative power between all the groups investigated. In addition, functional performance was better explained by executive functioning performance than mnemonic performance. Preventive actions, better diagnostic accuracy and guidelines for improving quality of life may consider executive functions and direct examination of functionality among their assumptions.