Psychometric properties of the Caregiver’s inventory neuropsychological diagnosis dementia (CINDD) in mild cognitive impairment and dementia

The Caregiver’s Inventory Neuropsychological Diagnosis Dementia (CINDD) is an easy tool designedto quantify cognitive, behavioural and functional deficits of patients with cognitive impairment. Aim of the presentstudy was to analyse the psychometric properties of the CINDD in Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and Dementia(D).

The CINDD, composed by 9 sub-domains, was administered to fifty-six caregiversof patients with different types of dementia (D) and 44 caregivers of patients with MCI. All patients underwent anextensive neuropsychological assessment, the Neuropsychiatric Inventory (NPI) and functional autonomy scales.The reliability, convergent construct validity and possible cut-off of CINND were measured by Cronbach’s alpha (α),Pearson’s correlation and ROC analysis, respectively.

The D and MCI patients differed only for age (p=0.006). The internal consistency of CINDD was high (α=0.969). The α-value for each CINDD domain was considered acceptable, except the mood domain (α=0.209). TheCINDD total score correlated with cognitive screening tests; each domain of the CINDD correlated with thecorresponding score from either tests or NPI (p<0.05), except for visuo-spatial perception skills and apathy. Ascreening cut-off equal to 59, can be used discriminate D from MCI (Sensitivity=0.70, Specificity=0.57).

The CINDD is a feasible, accurate and reliable tool for the assessment of cognitive and behaviouraldifficulties in patients with different degree of cognitive impairment. It may be used to quantify and monitorcaregiver-reported ecological data in both clinical and research settings.