Cognitive impairment in patients with clinical vestibular diagnoses
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Elevator Pitch
2020 UW Oto-HNS Graduation Symposium
Posters from our graduating residents & students
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Elevator Pitch
Your aim seems to encompass many hypotheses. Is there a primary hypothesis for your study?
We are currently working on developing a composite scoring system that will allow us to give each patient a single score that represents their vestibular function. Our hope is that this will reduce the number of active variables to strengthen our final statistical analyses.
Assuming we can demonstrate the validity of this scoring tool, our primary hypothesis is that poorer vestibular function (represented by this composite vestibular score) is associated with lower cognitive function (represented by a worse performance on the MoCA screening tool).
The is potentially very interesting. How does the age-MoCA distribution of your population compare to what must be a huge population in the “all comers” studies that do not select for those visiting a vestibular clinic?
Our studies show a similar distribution and association, with lower MoCA scores w/ increasing age — however, our total number of abnormal (<26) MoCA results were higher (44% in our population compared to 31% in other normative studies among similar age ranges).
Looking more at these normative studies, it appears that age, education level, and sex are all other significant factors that affect MoCA outcomes, so definitely something we will keep in mind when continuing this analysis / setting up a prospective study.