Baseline scores of Mini-Mental State examination (MMSE) for early prediction of developing dementia in people with mild cognitive impairments (MCI)

Cochrane: Patients with MCI should be evaluated and monitored due to their increased risk of progression to dementia. At present there are no agreements about what the best approach is to register the progression to dementia. Several cognitive function tests have been proposed for this task because most of them are easy to administer, take no longer than 10 minutes to complete, involve major executive functions, and yield an objective score.

Our review assessed the current evidence related to one of those brief tests, the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), in the prediction of decline to dementia in people with cognitive impairments. After an extensive search and analysis of available information, we did not find evidence supporting a substantial role of MMSE as a stand-alone single-administration test in the identification of patients who will convert to dementia in the future.

Authors' conclusions: 

Our review did not find evidence supporting a substantial role of MMSE as a stand-alone single-administration test in the identification of MCI patients who could develop dementia. Clinicians could prefer to request additional and extensive tests to be sure about the management of these patients. An important aspect to assess in future updates is if conversion to dementia from MCI stages could be predicted better by MMSE changes over time instead of single measurements. It is also important to assess if a set of tests, rather than an isolated one, may be more successful in predicting conversion from MCI to dementia.