Dr. Ronny Jackson, then the White House physician, gave Donald Trump a standard test to detect early signs of dementia — and said the president had scored a perfect 30. … A media outlet even posted its questions online, suggesting readers could measure whether they were “fit to be U.S. president.”
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Dr. Ziad Nasreddine, the creator of that test, the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, went with it. Within weeks, the Lebanese-Canadian neurologist and his colleagues were working on “mini-MoCA,” an online exam for anyone to take who was worried about his own cognitive decline. …
Now Nasreddine has changed course. He says growing worries about the validity of test results — and possible liability for errors — have pressed him to require those who administer the test to pay for mandatory certification.
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Nasreddine said he has seen testing errors after reviewing hundreds of MoCA exams given by doctors and others who didn’t properly follow a four-page list of directions.
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On some tests, scores varied by as much as five points in the same patient over a few weeks, Nasreddine said.
“That is a lot of points out of 30,” he said. “If it’s within the same month, it’s not because the disease changed that quickly.”
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