TESE-Fernanda S Pere.. - Departamento de Psiquiatria

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SUMMARY
Pereira, FS. “Executive Function and Functional Status in normal elderly, Mild
cognitive impairment and Alzheimer disease” [dissertation]. São Paulo:
Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade de São Paulo; 2009.
Introduction: The objective of the study is to examine the association between
executive functions and functional status in a cross section of older adults with
varying degrees of cognitive impairment and characterize the functional status. The
second objective of this study was to translate, culturally adapt the Direct Assessment
of Functional Status- revised (DAFS-R) for Brazilian Portuguese (DAFS-BR), and to
evaluate its reliability and validity to characterize the functional status in each
diagnostic group. Previous studies show different results from objective assessment
of functional abilities compared to information based on informants’ reports. In this
study we compared perception of functional status between objective (performance
test) e subjective (caregivers’ judgments) measures of assessment. Methods: 89
individuals (mean age 73.8 years) underwent clinical and neuropsychological
evaluations, and were allocated into three diagnostic groups according to cognitive
status: normal controls (NC, n=32), mild cognitive impairment (MCI, n=31) and
mild Alzheimer’s disease (AD, n=26). Executive functions were assessed with the
25-item Executive Interview (EXIT25), and functional status was measured with the
Brazilian version of the Direct Assessment of Functional Status test (DAFS-BR).
Results: We found a robust negative correlation between the DAFS-R and the
EXIT25 scores (r=-0.872, p