Assessment of Cognitive Disorders in Alcoholics Using the 7 Minute Screening Battery

주정의존 환자에서 7분선별검사를 이용한 인지장애의 평가

Objectives : Chronic alcohol consumption has been known to result in various neurocognitive deficits. Many neuropsychological studies revealed that the major disturbances occurred in the executive function, learning and short-term memory, visuospatial performance function, perceptuo-motor skills, and abstraction and problem solving abilities. This study was done to identify which cognitive areas might be mainly affected. Methods : The cognitive disturbance was evaluated using the Korean Version of the Mini Mental State Examination(MMSEK) and the 7 Minute Screen(7MS) in male inpatients with alcohol dependence(N=3 : as well as in age and education level matched healthy male controls(N=30). Four individual tests of the 7MS were consisted of the Benton Temporal Orientation Test, the Enhanced Cued Recall, the Clock Drawing and the Category Fluency. Results : 1) The average scores of four individual test of the 7MS for the alcoholics were $2.77{\pm}4.38$ for the Benton Temporal Orientation Test, $13.90{\pm}2.02$ for the Memory Test(the Cued Recall $6.77{\pm}1.94$, the Uncued Recall $7.10{\pm}2.45$), $5.84{\pm}1.86$ for the Clock Drawing, and $12.58{\pm}3.29$ for the Category Fluency. Except the Benton Temporal Orientation Test, there were statistically significant differences between test scores of alcoholics and those of controls(p<0.01). 2) The alcoholics who had MMSE-K score <24 were 9.68%. The average(${\pm}S.D.$) score of the MMSE-K for the patient group($27.23{\pm}2.62$) was significantly(p<0.001) lower than that of the healthy controls($29.20{\pm}1.24$). There were no statistically significant differences between four individual test scores of the 7MS of alcoholics with the MMSE-K score <24(N=3) and those of alcoholics with the MMSE-K score ${\geq}24$(N=28). 3) Four individual test scores of the 7MS seemed to have statistically significant association with such variables as MMSE-K, duration of alcohol drinking, blood magnesium concentration, liver function and thyroid function. Conclusion : Mild deficits of cognitive areas such as orientation, memory, visuospatial abilities and verbal fluency could be found in alcohol dependence.