Predicting Functional Performance by Patients with Alzheimer's Disease Using the Problems in Everyday Living (PEDL) Test: a Preliminary Study

Findings from a recent population-based survey indicate that about 33% of patients with dementia reside alone. Because many of these patients may not have a caregiver who visits them regularly, the need for a neuropsychological (NP) test to predict patients' functional competence to live alone safely is evident. In this study, we compared the accuracy of predicting Instrumental and Basic Activities (IADLs and ADLs) of 22 patients with Alzheimer's disease using several standard NP tests and the newly developed Problems in Everyday Living (PEDL) test. Performance of IADLs and ADLs as rated by caregivers was significantly correlated with performance on the PEDL, the Mini-Mental State Exam (MMSE), and with the Shipley Institute of Living Test of Verbal Abstraction (SILS-A), but not with vocabulary or naming. The PEDL was the best predictor of IADL scores (r = 0.71), compared to the MMSE (r = 0.52) and the SILS-A (r = 0.57), while the MMSE was the best predictor of ADL performance (r = 0.69), compared to the PEDL (r = 0.58) and the SILS-A (r = 0.50).