Enhanced cued recall has a high utility as a screening test in the diagnosis of Alzheimerʹs disease and mild cognitive impairment in Turkish people

Enhanced cued recall (ECR) is highly sensitive and specific in discrimination of demented from non-demented elderly persons. The nature of the test promises that it can be applicable to subjects in different cultures and education level. We studied the utility of the test in a Turkish population. Eighty consecutive cases with dementia or mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and 33 elderly controls were studied. The utility of ECR was high in discriminating dementia from controls (area under curve (AUC)) of the ROC curve: 0.907 (95% confidence interval (CI): 0.830–0.953 for total recall), Alzheimerʹs disease from controls (AUC: 0.990 (95%CI: 0.934–0.998 for total recall)) and moderate (AUC: 0.625 (95%CI: 0.545–0.812 for third free recall)) in discriminating MCI from controls. Education did not affect the utility of the test. We conclude that ECR is a valuable test in assessment of elderly Turkish patients with a complaint of memory impairment.