Revision and validation of the short 10/66 dementia diagnostic assessment for older populations in Kintampo, Ghana.

July 9,2022 | Ongoing Project | Reading time: 6 min

Investigators

Dr. Maëlenn Guerchet, Mr. Solomon Nyame, Mr. Richard Tetteh, Dr. Kenneth Ae-Ngibise, Dr. Naana Agyeman, Dr. Kwaku Poku Asante, Prof. Pierre-Marie Preux

Background
Dementia is a word used by doctors to describe problems with memory, concentration and thinking if they become serious enough to affect day to day life. This is a problem that affects older people in particular; around one in 20 of all those aged 65 years and over. It can be caused by several different disease processes, the commonest of which is Alzheimer’s disease.

We are keen to understand more about dementia, from Ghana, where the problem has been little studied. One of the reason why it has been little studied in Ghana, and other parts of African and the world, is that it is difficult to evaluate the symptoms present in the older person using its language and taking into account where they live.

Instruments allowing this evaluation need to be adapted and validated to be sure we are taking into account the environment where older people live. Symptoms might seem common for an old person and not reported or seen by their family. They might also present differently in Ghana than they do in other parts of the world. We aim at investigating how we can improve our evaluation and make it adapted and efficient for older people in Kintampo and in Ghana.

Objectives

• 1.To make changes in the diagnostic assessment and explore assessment quality as well as deviations from protocol.




• 2.To check whether the revised version of the 10/66 short-form dementia diagnostic assessment is able to identify individuals with dementia in Kintampo.

Key Findings
Currently, community screening activities are ongoing in the two districts. So far, about 1,263 community members 60+ years have been contacted and 1,038 of them have been screened using a prescreening instrument designed using ODK and installed on Samsung android tablets.

Expected Outcome
Outcomes from this project will be a culturally adapted and validated version of the 10/66 short-form dementia diagnostic assessment and algorithm, alongside development of protocols for enhanced training and protocols for supervision methods to ensure high standards of fidelity of administration and rating. The instrument’s revision and validation will be published in an open-access international journal.

Collaborators:
Dr. Maëlenn Guerchet and Prof. Pierre-Marie Preux

Funders:
Global Brain Health Institute