Cross-cultural adaptation of the everyday cognition scale (M-ECog) in older Mexican adults with cognitive impairment

The Everyday Cognition (ECog) scale was created to evaluate the functional abilities of older adults across a wide range of abilities between normal aging and dementia. ECog screens cognitive alterations such as subjective cognitive decline (SCD) and mild cognitive impairment (MCI). This early recognition is done by the measurement of the ability to perform the activities of daily living (ADLs). OBJECTIVE: To establish the cross-cultural adaptation, validity, and reliability of the ECog Mexican version (M-ECog) in participants with: SCD, MCI, and dementia coming from a memory clinic. METHODS: There were 200 patients and their respective informants in a memory clinic of a third level hospital in Mexico City. Four groups were studied: 50 cognitively healthy (CH), 50 SCD, 50 MCI, and 50 dementia. The clinical evaluation included: sociodemographic and health characteristics, cognitive status by the Mini-Mental State Evaluation (MMSE) and Montreal Cognitive Evaluation Spanish version (MoCA-E), and caregiver information (informants) about the difficulty in ADLs as well as the ECog Spanish version (M-ECog). RESULTS: The M-ECog was significantly correlated with MMSE, MoCA-E, and ADLs. It showed the ability to discriminate the different cognitive declines (Cronbach’s alpha 0.881). The intra-class correlation coefficient was 0.877 (95% confidence interval — CI, 0.850–0.902; p<0.001). The patient’s group area under curve (AUC) of M-ECog for SCD was 0.70 (95%CI 0.58–0.82, p<0.005), for MCI it was 0.94 (95%CI 0.89–0.99, p<0.001) and for dementia 0.86 (95%CI 0.79–0.92, p<0.001). CONCLUSION: The M-ECog scale proves to be valid and reliable for measuring everyday abilities mediated by cognition. It is self-applicable without requiring extensive prior formation. It is useful to screen for SCD and MCI in older Mexican adults.