Cognitive assessment instruments used in elderly Brazilians in the last five years

Abstract

Detecting and monitoring cognitive deficits in elderly populations are necessary, as they can impact individuals´ functionality. This integrative review aims to analyze the scientific production on the use of cognitive assessment instruments in Brazilian elderly individuals through articles published in the last five years, indexed in the Web of Science, Pubmed, Scopus and Bireme databases. Inclusion criteria were original articles published in English and Portuguese from 2012 to 2016, the age criterion to define elderly individuals and scores higher than 6 in the adapted CASP. The exclusion criterion was conference abstracts submitted for publication. The final sample consisted of 100 articles. Sixty-one cognitive assessment instruments were used in the studies, especially the Mini-Mental State Examination. This review features the use of cognitive instruments in the Brazilian literature, their different versions and domains evaluated. The literature includes a large number of instruments. The most used tests were the MMSE (version proposed by Brucki et al.), the Verbal Fluency Test ("animal" category) and the Digit Span Memory Test (forward span and backward span). The findings presented in this review are relevant not only for observational and experimental research but also for clinical practice.