| Abstrakt: |
Objective: As life expectancy and Latino populations increase in the United States, it is important to provide linguistically congruent neuropsychological assessments to assist in the treatment and diagnosis of neurodegenerative processes. This case used a linguistically congruent evaluation and appropriate norms in a 72-year-old Latin male with low education, to inform treatment recommendations. Method: A 72-year-old Latin male with five years of education was referred by his neurologist in the context of cognitive, behavioral, and functional decline over the past several years. He was educated outside of the United States, in a Spanish-speaking country, and speaks limited English. Therefore, testing was administered in Spanish. All test data were compared to other Spanish-speaking clinical patients with low education levels from his country of origin when available (11 articles). Results: Overall given the evidence, he was diagnosed with Mild Neurocognitive Disorder due to Multiple Etiologies, with behavioral disturbance. His profile revealed weaknesses in verbal learning and memory, attention, and psychomotor processing speed. However, when compared to non-corrected norms, he performed significantly different (at least 1 SD) across several measures. Conclusions: Using a linguistically congruent evaluation, in addition to a compilation of age and education-corrected norms, we came to a diagnostic conclusion of a Mild Neurocognitive Disorder. If the normative data not been corrected for age and education, his impairments in visuospatial abilities and attention would have been inflated. As the Latino population continues to age, it becomes increasingly important to develop ways to assess this population appropriately. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
