Clinical utility and psychometric properties of Prefrontal Symptoms Inventory (PSI) in acquired brain injury and degenerative dementias

• Published in: Revista de neurologiá Vol. 61; no. 9; pp. 387 - 394
• Main Authors: Ruiz-Sánchez de León, José M, Pedrero-Pérez, Eduardo J, Gálvez, S, Fernández-Méndez, Laura M, Lozoya-Delgado, Paz
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: Spanish
• Published: Spain 01.11.2015
• Subjects: Activities of Daily Living; Adult; Aged; Aged, 80 and over; Agnosia - diagnosis; Agnosia - psychology; Brain Damage, Chronic - etiology; Brain Damage, Chronic - psychology; Brain Injuries - psychology; Brain Neoplasms - complications; Brain Neoplasms - surgery; Dementia - psychology; Executive Function; Female; Humans; Male; Memory Disorders - diagnosis; Memory Disorders - psychology; Mental Disorders - etiology; Mental Disorders - psychology; Middle Aged; Multiple Sclerosis - complications; Neurodegenerative Diseases - psychology; Observer Variation; Personality Assessment; Personality Inventory; Postoperative Complications - psychology; Prefrontal Cortex - physiopathology; Psychometrics; Self Report; Severity of Illness Index; Stroke - complications; Surveys and Questionnaires; Symptom Assessment - methods
• ISSN: 1576-6578

The cognitive, emotional and behavioural alterations secondary to acquired brain injury and degenerative dementias can be quantitatively and quantitatively appraised by administering self-reports that ask both patients and reliable informants about the difficulties patients have in their everyday life. The Prefrontal Symptoms Inventory (PSI) and the Modified Memory Failures in Everyday Life Questionnaire (MFE-30) were administered to 174 paired participants: 87 patients with brain damage or degenerative dementias and their 87 reliable informants. In addition to the psychometric goodness of the tests, the study also explored the clinical usefulness of applying these questionnaires to patients and their informants in order to obtain a rate of discrepancy in the scores as a measure of anosognosia. The results show how applying the PSI-20 (20 items) or the PSI (46 items), whether administered together with the MFE-30 (30 items) or not, is a very useful procedure for assessing the symptoms in individuals with acquired brain injury or degenerative dementias, since it yields a great deal of information about patients' difficulties in their daily life. We recommend that, in addition to the compulsory neuropsychological assessment, questionnaires or inventories of symptoms like those proposed here should be carried out, due to the fact that they offer a number of advantages from the clinical point of view, as well as being efficacious and effective in economic terms.