General practitioners' judgment of their elderly patients' cognitive status.

Autor: Pentzek, Michael, Fuchs, Angela, Wiese, Birgitt, Cvetanovska-Pllashniku, Gabriela, Haller, Franziska, Maier, Wolfgang, Riedel-Heller, Steffi G., Angermeyer, Matthias C., Bickel, Horst, Mösch, Edelgard, Weyerer, Siegfried, Werle, Jochen, van den Bussche, Hendrik, Eisele, Marion, Kaduszkiewicz, Hanna, Mösch, Edelgard, AgeCoDe study group
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Zdroj: JGIM: Journal of General Internal Medicine; Dec2009, Vol. 24 Issue 12, p1314-1317, 4p, 2 Charts
Abstrakt: Background: General practitioners (GP) play an important role in detecting cognitive impairment among their patients.Objectives: To explore factors associated with GPs' judgment of their elderly patients' cognitive status.Design: Cross-sectional data from an observational cohort study (AgeCoDe study); General practice surgeries in six German metropolitan study centers; home visits by interviewers.Participants: 138 GPs, 3,181 patients (80.13 +/- 3.61 years, 65.23% female).Measurements: General practitioner questionnaire for each patient: familiarity with the patient, patient morbidity, judgment of cognitive status. Home visits by trained interviewers: sociodemographic and clinical data, psychometric test performance. Multivariate regression analysis was used to identify independent associations with the GPs' judgment of "cognitively impaired" vs. "cognitively unimpaired."Results: Less familiar patients (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] 2.42, 95% CI 1.35-4.32, for poor vs. very high familiarity), less mobile patients (aOR 1.29, 95% CI 1.13-1.46), patients with impaired hearing (aOR 5.46, 95% CI 2.35-12.67 for serious vs. no problems), and patients with greater comorbidity (aOR 1.15, 95% CI 1.08-1.22) were more likely to be rated as "cognitively impaired" by their GPs.Conclusions: The associations between GPs' assessments of cognitive impairment and their familiarity with their patients and patients' mobility, hearing, and morbidity provide important insights into how GPs make their judgments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Databáze: Complementary Index