Screening for Aphasia in NeuroDegeneration for the Diagnosis of Patients with Primary Progressive Aphasia: Clinical Validity and Psychometric Properties

Dement Geriatr Cogn Disord. 2018;46(3-4):243-252. doi: 10.1159/000492632. Epub 2018 Oct 23.

Abstract

Background: We evaluated the psychometric proprieties of the Screening for Aphasia in NeuroDegeneration (SAND) battery in Italian primary progressive aphasia (PPA) and movement disorder (MD) patients.

Methods: The sample included 30 consecutive PPA and 45 MD patients who completed the SAND battery together with a clinical interview and a neurological/neuropsychological examination and 130 healthy controls (HC).

Results: The SAND battery showed good internal consistency and good convergent and divergent validity. receiver operating characteristic analysis revealed an area under the curve of 0.978 for PPA versus HC and of 0.786 for PPA versus MD. A cutoff ≥3 gave a sensitivity of 0.933% and a specificity of 0.946% for discriminating PPA versus HC, whereas a cutoff ≥5 gave a sensitivity of 0.767% and a specificity of 0.667% for discriminating PPA versus MD.

Conclusion: These results indicate that the SAND battery is an adequate, reliable, and valid diagnostic tool for PPA.

Keywords: Dementia; Diagnostic accuracy; Language impairment; Screening instrument; Speech-language assessment.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Aged
  • Aphasia, Primary Progressive* / diagnosis
  • Aphasia, Primary Progressive* / etiology
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Italien
  • Male
  • Mass Screening / methods
  • Middle Aged
  • Movement Disorders* / diagnosis
  • Movement Disorders* / etiology
  • Neurodegenerative Diseases / complications*
  • Neurologic Examination / methods
  • Neuropsychological Tests
  • Psychometrics / methods
  • ROC Curve
  • Reproducibility of Results
  • Speech Production Measurement / methods