A normative study of the Czech Edinburgh Cognitive and Behavioural ALS Screen (ECAS): a brief report
Abstract
Edinburgh Cognitive and Behavioural ALS Screen (ECAS) is a brief, standardized assessment of cognitiveimpairment inamyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Objective: We aimed to createa normative dataset for the ECAS Czech version (ECAS-CZ) in order to make the assessment applicable for clinical settings.
Method: Included were 102 healthy participants (mean age: 54.92 +/- 14.55; education: 14.52 +/- 2.44; 54:48 females/males) that fulfilled rigorous exclusion criteria and controlled for depressive symptoms. Results: The internal consistency of ECAS-CZ was acceptable (Cronbach's alpha = .69).
We found medium correlations (rho approximate to .5) of age and education with ECAS-CZ Total score but not with gender. Cut-offs with -2 SD's threshold are presented for the differentiation of cognitive impairment.
We report percentile values for ECAS-CZ Total including all subscales. Conclusion: We provide normative values for ECAS-CZ that are well suited for the detection of cognitive impairment in clinical settings especially for patients with ALS.
Supplemental data for this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/13854046.2021.1978553 .