van Zwieten A, et al. - This cross-sectional study was undertaken to assess the prevalence and patterns of cognitive impairment across five domains of learning and memory, complex attention, executive function, language and perceptual-motor function in adult hemodialysis patients. Findings revealed that across numerous domains, cognitive impairment was extremely common and multiple deficits were often simultaneously experienced by patients. Tailoring clinical care was recommended to meet the requirements of patients with different types of cognitive impairment.

Methods

• This study included a total of 676 adult hemodialysis patients from 20 centers in Italy.
• Researchers assessed cognitive function using a neuropsychological battery of 10 tests and calculated test and domain z-scores using population norms (age or age/education).
• Cognitive impairment was defined as a z-score ≤ -1.5.

Results

• The reported median age of participants was 70.9 years (range 21.6–94.1) and 262 (38.8%) were women.
• According to findings, proportions of impairment on each domain were as follows: perceptual-motor function 31.5% (150/476), language 41.2% (273/662), executive function 41.7% (281/674), learning and memory 42.2% (269/638), complex attention 48.8% (329/674).
• Researchers found that among 474 participants with data for all domains, only 28.9% (n = 137) were not impaired on any domain, with 25.9% impaired on 1 domain (n = 123), 17.3% on 2 (n = 82), 13.9% on 3 (n = 66), 9.1% on 4 (n = 43) and 4.9% (n = 23) on all 5.
• In addition, they noted that patterns of impairment combinations were diverse across patients.