Screening for Cognitive and Behavioral Change in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis/Motor Neuron Disease: A Systematic Review of Validated Screening Methods
This systematic review investigates the validity of screening tools to identify and detect cognitive and behavioral changes in individuals with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London (United Kingdom); NIHR Maudsley Biomedical Research Center, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (United Kingdom)
Database inception through June 2017
Observational studies
14
<div>For screening cognitive and behavioral changes in individuals with ALS, ten studies investigating clinical validity found:</div>
<ul>
<li><strong>The Edinburgh Cognitive and Behavioural ALS Screen (ECAS) </strong>has high sensitivity, high specificity, and high convergent validity for measuring language and social cognition deficits while offering options for accommodating motor and speech dysfunctions.</li>
<li><strong>The ALS Cognitive Behavioural Screen (ALS-CBS) </strong>has high sensitivity and high specificity for measuring executive dysfunction while offering options for accommodating motor dysfunctions.</li>
<li><strong>The Motor Neuron Disease Behavioural Instrument (MiND-B) </strong>has better clinical validity when used with the Mini-ACE screening test, but assesses only a few behavioral functions.</li>
<li><strong>The Frontal Behavioural Inventory-ALS </strong>has no studies reporting on validity.</li>
<li><strong>The ALS Frontotemporal Dementia Questionnaire (ALS-FTD-Q) </strong>"has no studies assessing its clinical validity, but two studies presented data concerning convergent validity" (p. 9).</li>
<li><strong>The Beaumont Behavioural Inventory (BBI) </strong>has scarce validity data, but assesses a wider spectrum of behavioral involvement while accommodating the effect of motor dysfunction as compared to the ALS-FTD-Q.</li>
</ul>
