The following symptoms and complaints may indicate “mild cognitive impairment”:
Definition
- Evidence of cognitive decline (self-reported or external history).
- Evidence of cognitive impairment, eg.
- Difficulty in completing complex tasks
- Problems of episodic memory: facts and events that either belong to one’s biography or make up what is known as a person’s knowledge of the world
- Problems with appointments
- Word finding problems
- Everyday functions not or only minimally (in complex actions) impaired
- Absence of dementia (i.e., dementia must be excluded!).
Further notes
- In an olfactory test in older cognitively still healthy participants with poor scores (hyposmia; reduced ability to smell), the rate of patients with mild cognitive impairment was more than twice as high in the quartile with the worst test scores as in the quartile with the best scores.
Differentiation of dementia from mild cognitive impairment ( MCI)
- The demarcation of dementia from mild cognitive impairment (“MCI”) is defined by the impairment of everyday functions by the cognitive or behavioral impairment. The assessment of impairment of daily living is a clinical assessment based on the individual patient constellation and on information provided by the patient and an informant.
Warning signs (red flags)
- Cognitive problems → think of: Apoplexy risk (stroke risk) Cognitive problems often precede apoplexy (stroke). In this case, the risk of apoplexy is increased by about 40%. The increase in risk is largely independent of cardiovascular risk factors.
