Optimizing Pre-screening to Identify Potential Subjects for Early Intervention Trials

• Activity Number: 110
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Monday, August 12, 2002 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Biometrics Section*
• Author(s): Siu Hui*+ and Lang Li and Sujuan Gao
• Affiliation(s): Indiana University School of Medicine and Indiana University and Indiana University School of Medicine
• Keywords: classification ; screening

Abstract

Early intervention trials generally require large numbers of participants that are at high risk of developing the disease. For example, only subjects with mild cognitive impairment are usually enrolled in intervention trials to prevent the onset of dementia. This is to ensure a large enough number of incident dementias within a reasonable length of follow-up so there is adequate power to detect the intervention effect. Unfortunately, clinical diagnosis of cognitive impairment requires extensive neuropsychological and clinical assessment. Hence, the usual strategy is to administer a screening instrument to potential subjects and only select those who score poorly for clinically assessment. To identify large numbers of people with at least some mild cognitive impairment, very large numbers of subjects in the general population of elderly must be screened. Thus, a very brief pre-screening instrument with only a few items is desirable to identify potential subjects, who can then be further screened with a more extensive but more precise instrument. Our goal in this presentation is to identify the best few items for pre-screening out of a community-based screening instrument.